Towards minimal conditions for ergotropy injection in open quantum systems

Quantum Physics arXiv:2609.04457 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 3 Sep 2026] Title:Towards minimal conditions for ergotropy injection in open quantum systems Authors:Deependra Singh, Debarupa Saha, Ujjwal Sen View a PDF of the paper titled Towards minimal conditions for ergotropy injection in open quantum systems, by Deependra Singh and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Interactions between a quantum system and its environment can inject ergotropy into the system, raising the question of the minimal dimensionality and physical resources required for such injection. We first show that ergotropy injection is impossible under thermal operations when both the system and environment are qubits, whereas it becomes possible when the environment is enlarged to a qutrit. We further show that already in the qubit-qubit setting, relaxing environmental thermality and allowing interactions between system and environment allows ergotropy increment under energy-conserving unitaries. To elucidate the role of interactions, we consider a two-qubit isotropic XY interaction Hamiltonian and identify its distinct degeneracy regimes. We show that, in the central-block regime, when both the initial system and environmental states are incoherent, no ergotropic gain is possible when the environment is initially thermal, irrespective of the interaction strength. In contrast, environmental athermality in the form of population inversion, while retaining incoherence, enables ergotropic injection. We derive the optimal ergotropic gain and show that environmental coherence can enhance it, while system coherence alone need not be beneficial and can even reduce the gain. We further consider the double-degenerate regime, characterized by a finite interaction strength, and demonstrate positive ergotropic gain even for a thermal environment. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2609.04457 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2609.04457v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.04457 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Deependra Singh [view email] [v1] Thu, 3 Sep 2026 20:31:14 UTC (416 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Towards minimal conditions for ergotropy injection in open quantum systems, by Deependra Singh and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-09 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)