Lost and found charge in quantum batteries
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Abstract
Quantum batteries are prone to loosing 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 affirmatively, leveraging a non-trivial usage of the seemingly useless thermal environment to recycle the quantum batteries. The framework involves two different kind of assistance from thermal environment - one by accessing only the thermal particle, actively participating in the interaction; and the other, involving assistance from an additional purifying subsystem for the thermal environment, bearing a passive role to the interaction. Interestingly, we report that the difference between the retrieved charge between these two degrees of assistance characterizes the amount of entanglement generated by the thermal operation between the quantum battery and the purifying subsystem for the thermal environment.