Quantum Charging Advantage Cannot Be Extensive Without Global Operations

Understand

Quantum batteries are devices made from quantum states, which store and release energy in a fast and efficient manner, thus offering numerous possibilities in future technological applications.

• They offer a significant charging speedup when compared to classical batteries, due to the possibility of using entangling charging operations.
• We show that the maximal speedup that can be achieved is extensive in the number of cells, thus offering at most quadratic scaling in the charging power over the classically achievable linear scaling.
• To reach such a scaling, a global charging protocol, charging all the cells collectively, needs to be employed.