Lost and found charge in quantum batteries

Abstract

Quantum batteries are prone to losing their stored charge, when interacting with a thermal environment. However, getting a limited assistance from the thermal environment, is it possible to recover the charge back, in a reusable form? Here, we answer this question, by involving an assistance of a suitable measurement performed on the environment. This framework resembles the structure of quantum instruments in the thermodynamic scenario. Our proposed framework involves two different kind of assistance from thermal environment - one by accessing only the thermal particle, actively participating in the interaction, providing a weak retrieval of charge, while the other involves local assistance from an additional quantum system purifying the thermal environment, resulting in the strong retrieval of the lost charges. By setting the upper-bound on the amount of charges retrieved in each of these two situations, we report that their difference characterizes the amount of entanglement generated between the quantum battery and the reference system due to the thermal interaction. Finally, we exemplify the extreme instances of the difference between the weak and the strongly retrieved charges for qubit batteries.

4.5+5.5 pages, 3 figures. Comments are welcome