Scientists from the Universities of Alberta and Toronto developed a blueprint for a new quantum battery that doesn’t leak charge.
The research team considered an open quantum network model with high structural symmetry as a platform for storing excitonic energy — energy harnessed when an electron absorbs a sufficiently energetic photon of light. Using this model, they showed it is possible to store energy without any loss.
Robust quantum energy storage devices are essential to realize powerful next-generation batteries.
The team has provided a proof of concept for a loss-free Excitonic Quantum Battery (EQB) by using an open quantum network model that exhibits exchange symmetries linked to its structural topology. By storing electronic excitation energy in a symmetry-protected dark state living in a decoherence-free subspace, one can protect the charged EQB from environment-induced energy losses, thereby making it a promising platform for long-term energy storage.
To illustrate the key physical principles and potential functionality of this concept, they have hence considered an open quantum network model of a para-benzene-like structure. They demonstrated through numerical simulations the immunity of the charged EQB to environmentally induced losses and further show how to harness the stored energy by adding a symmetry-breaking perturbation (SBP) to the network.
They also investigated the impact of static disorder and temperature fluctuations of the SBP on the performance of the EQB during its storage and discharge phases. Apart from the cases with very strong static disorder, the performance of the EQB is essentially unaltered, thereby demonstrating the robustness of the proposed EQB.
The study, “Loss-Free Excitonic Quantum Battery,” was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
