Entangled Measurement Outcomes for Optimal Postselection in Quantum Batteries

Abstract

Postselection can enhance the performance of a selected quantum battery branch, raising the question of whether the optimum can always be achieved by product measurements on the auxiliary subsystems. For battery auxiliary states obtained by mixing a pure state with global white noise of strength p, the conditional ergotropy reduces to a generalized Rayleigh quotient. For 0<p<1, product postselection attains the joint optimum if and only if the eigenspace associated with the largest generalized eigenvalue contains a product vector. For two auxiliary qubits, a strict product-joint gap therefore occurs precisely when this eigenspace is one dimensional and spanned by an entangled vector. Noisy W and GHZ states display qualitatively different behavior: the three qubit W state exhibits a strict gap throughout 0<p<1, whereas the three qubit GHZ state admits a product optimum. For interacting two qubit batteries, the optimal postselection can switch from a Bell outcome to a product outcome as the coupling strength is varied. By contrast, the outcome averaged capacity and ergotropy are independent of the measurement basis, showing that the joint measurement advantage is genuinely postselective.