Extractable energy from quantum superposition of current states

Abstract We explore the energy content of superpositions of single-excitation current states. Specifically, we focus on the maximum energy that can be extracted from them through local unitary transformations. The figure of merit we employ is the local ergotropy. We consider an XY spin-chain model and perform a complete analysis in the whole range of the system parameters. This way, we prove that superpositions of two current states in spatially closed spin networks are characterized by specific peaks in extractable energy, generally overcoming the ergotropy of each of the two separate current states characterized by a single winding number. The many-body state dynamics entails to ergotropy evolving in a controlled fashion. The implementation we suggest is based on a Rydberg-atom platform. Optimal transformations able to extract locally the maximum possible amount of energy are sorted out.