Approximate second laws and energy extraction from quantum batteries

Abstract

Conservation of energy under thermal operations, \textbf{TO}, is ensured by commutation of the unitary generating such operations with the total Hamiltonian. However in realistic scenarios, perturbations or disturbances in the system are unavoidable, which in turn may alter the commutation relation and hence in succession may affect the physical processes governed by \textbf{TO}. We call the altered set of operations as approximate thermal operations, \textbf{TO}$_\epsilon$, where $\epsilon$ denotes a degree of disturbance. We provide state transformation conditions under such operations, providing what can be referred to as approximate second laws. We show that in presence of feeble perturbations in the system's Hamiltonian, the states transform in such a way that diagonal elements of the system states start talking not only with each other but also with the off-diagonal elements. In parallel, the off-diagonal elements transform in a way such that they start connecting with diagonal elements and other off-diagonal elements. Such cross-talk is disallowed in the unperturbed second laws. As an application, we show that approximate thermal operations may lead to finite ergotropy extraction from quantum batteries, something that the exact ones are unable to.