Ergotropy from coherences in an open quantum system

Abstract

We show that it is possible to have nonzero ergotropy in the steady states of an open quantum system consisting of qubits that are collectively coupled to a thermal bath at a finite temperature. The dynamics of our model leads the qubits into a steady state that has coherences in the energy eigenbasis when the system consists of more than a single qubit. We observe that even though the system does not have inverted populations, it is possible to extract work from the coherences and we analytically show that in the high-temperature limit, ergotropy per unit energy is equal to the l1 norm of coherence for the two-qubit case. Further, we analyze the scaling of coherence and ergotropy as a function of the number of qubits in the system for different initial states. Our results demonstrate that one can design a quantum battery that is charged by a dissipative thermal bath in the weak-coupling regime. © 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.