Certifying ergotropy under partial information

Abstract:Ergotropy, the maximum work extractable from a quantum system, is a central resource in quantum physics. Computing ergotropy is well established when the system state is fully known, but its estimation under partial information remains an open problem. Here we introduce a general certification framework that lower bounds ergotropy using only the expectation values of a limited set of arbitrary observables. The method naturally applies in the finite-statistics regime, yielding confidence-certified bounds that explicitly incorporate shot noise. We benchmark our approach on both synthetic data and experimental measurements from an IBM quantum processor. This establishes a robust and experimentally accessible tool for certifying extractable work in realistic quantum settings.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)

arXiv:2603.18828 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2603.18828v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18828 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

https://doi.org/10.1103/pl26-g6vy Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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