Topological enhancement of a PT-symmetric Su-Schrieffer-Heeger quantum battery
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Abstract
We investigate a non-Hermitian quantum battery based on the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattice, charged through a PT-symmetric protocol that alternates gain and loss between the two sublattices. The interplay between lattice topology and non-Hermiticity gives rise to both bulk and edge exceptional points (EPs), which govern the charging dynamics. In the topological regime, an edge-state EP emerges at an exponentially small non-Hermitian strength, resulting in early PT-symmetry breaking and rapid energy accumulation. This topological enhancement originates from the PT-symmetric non-Hermitian dynamics, in which the broken-symmetry edge mode with the largest imaginary part of the eigenvalue dominates the time evolution. Consequently, the topological phase consistently yields higher stored energy and faster saturation than the trivial configuration across all parameter regimes and system sizes. These findings demonstrate that topology constitutes a genuine physical resource for enhancing the performance of quantum batteries.