Dissipation suppression for an Unruh-DeWitt battery with a reflecting boundary

Abstract

In the framework of open quantum systems, we study the dynamics of an accelerated quantum battery (QB), modeled as an Unruh-DeWitt detector interacting with a real massless scalar quantum field. The QB is driven by an external classical force acting as a charger. A major challenge in this setup is the environment-induced decoherence, which leads to energy dissipation of the QB. Accelerated motion exacerbates this dissipation, manifesting effects analogous to those experienced by a static QB in a thermal bath in free space, consistent with the Unruh effect. To overcome these challenges, we introduce a reflecting boundary in a space, which modifies the vacuum fluctuations of the field and leads to a position-dependent suppression of dissipation for the Unruh-DeWitt QB. Our analysis reveals that as the QB approaches the boundary, the relevant dissipation is significantly reduced. In particular, when the QB is placed extremely close to the boundary, the dissipation is nearly eliminated, as if the QB were a closed system. Furthermore, we identify a characteristic length scale associated with the acceleration of QB. When the distance between the QB and the boundary is much smaller than this scale, the boundary effectively suppresses dissipation, and this suppression effect becomes identical for both an accelerated QB and a static QB in a thermal bath. Conversely, when the distance is beyond this scale, the suppression effect weakens and manifests a significant difference between these two cases. Our findings demonstrate the potential of boundary-induced modifications in vacuum fluctuations to effectively suppress dissipation, offering valuable insights for optimizing QB performance. This work paves the way for the development of high-efficiency quantum energy storage systems in the relativistic framework.