Quantum Batteries: A Nonreciprocal Thermal Edge

Nonreciprocal quantum batteries (QBs) leverage engineered environments to impose unidirectional energy flow, achieving a fourfold enhancement in energy storage over conventional designs. In this work, we establish thermal-reservoir engineering as a powerful tool for controlling and optimizing the performance of QBs. We demonstrate that a thermal-reservoir-driven nonreciprocal QB achieves significantly enhanced charging, surpassing its vacuum-reservoir counterpart. Crucially, the nonreciprocal ergotropy is thermally invariant and coincides with the vacuum-reservoir energy, despite the temperature-dependent rise in total stored energy. This reveals a “thermally shielded” work potential, where nonreciprocity effectively decouples energy storage from energy quality, ensuring robust work extraction despite the thermal environment. Consequently, engineered thermal reservoirs emerge as a key resource for developing high-performance, noise-resilient quantum batteries.