title: Entanglement boost for extractable work from ensembles of quantum batteries.
abstract: Motivated by the recent interest in thermodynamics of micro- and mesoscopic quantum systems we study the maximal amount of work that can be reversibly extracted from a quantum system used to temporarily store energy. Guided by the notion of passivity of a quantum state we show that entangling unitary controls extract in general more work than independent ones. In the limit of a large number of copies one can reach the thermodynamical bound given by the variational principle for the free energy.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdańsk, Poland. fizra@univ.gda.pl
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Alicki
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fannes