Bounds on the capacity and power of quantum batteries

Abstract

Quantum batteries, composed of quantum cells, are expected to outperform their classical analogs. The origin of such advantages lies in the role of quantum correlations, which may arise during the charging and discharging processes performed on the battery. In this theoretical work, we introduce a systematic characterization of the relevant quantities of quantum batteries, i.e., the capacity and the power, in relation to such correlations. For these quantities, we derive upper bounds for batteries that are a collection of noninteracting quantum cells with fixed Hamiltonians. The capacity, that is, a bound on the stored or extractable energy, is derived with the help of the energy-entropy diagram, and this bound is respected as long as the charging and discharging processes are entropy preserving. While studying power, we consider a geometric approach for the evolution of the battery state in the energy eigenspace of the battery Hamiltonian. Then, an upper bound for power is derived for arbitrary charging process, in terms of the Fisher information and the energy variance of the battery. The former quantifies the speed of evolution, and the latter encodes the nonlocal character of the battery state. Indeed, due to the fact that the energy variance is bounded by the multipartite entanglement properties of batteries composed of qubits, we establish a fundamental bound on power imposed by quantum entanglement. We also discuss paradigmatic models for batteries that saturate the bounds both for the stored energy and power. Several experimentally realizable quantum batteries, based on integrable spin chains, the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick and the Dicke models, are also studied in the light of these newly introduced bounds.