Reservoir-Engineered Exceptional Points for Quantum Energy Storage

Abstract

Exceptional points are spectral singularities where both eigenvalues and eigenvectors collapse onto a single mode, causing the system behavior to shift abruptly and making it highly responsive to even small perturbations. Although widely studied in optical and quantum systems, using them for energy storage in quantum systems has been difficult because existing approaches rely on gain, precise balanced loss, or explicitly non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. Here we introduce a quantum energy-storage mechanism that realizes exceptional-point physics in a fully passive, physically consistent open quantum system. Instead of amplification, we use trace-preserving reservoir engineering to create an effective complex interaction between a charging mode and a storage mode through a dissipative mediator, generating an exceptional point directly in the drift matrix of the Heisenberg-Langevin equations while preserving complete positivity. The resulting dynamics exhibit two regimes: a stable phase where the stored energy saturates, and a broken phase where energy grows exponentially under a bounded coherent drive. This rapid charging arises from dissipative interference that greatly boosts energy flow between the modes without gain media or nonlinear amplification. The mechanism is compatible with optomechanical devices, superconducting circuits, and magnonic systems, offering a practical route to fast, robust, and scalable quantum energy-storage technologies and new directions in quantum thermodynamics.