📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

We study the charging dynamics of a quantum battery coupled to a structured reservoir composed of two qubits, each in thermal equilibrium with its own bosonic bath. The structured reservoir interacts with a charger battery model through three distinct configurations: (I) direct coupling between the reservoir qubits and the battery, (II) common coupling between the reservoir qubits, the charger, and the battery, and (III) common coupling between the reservoir qubits and the charger, together with a local charger battery interaction. For both incoherent and coherent initial states, we analyze the stored energy, ergotropy, and charging power of the battery, and establish upper and lower bounds on the maximum extractable work of the battery based on the free energy of coherence, and exchanged correlations between the subsystems. Our results show that the nature of the interaction scenario and the presence of coherence crucially determine the efficiency of charging and the maximum ergotropy. We demonstrate that correlation exchange between subsystems, quantified by the difference between global and local coherence, acts as a resource for work extraction. These findings provide a deeper understanding of coherence and population and structured environments as resources for autonomous quantum batteries, and offer experimentally accessible predictions within the regime of superconducting qubits.