Bound-state-mediated remote charging of a quantum battery

Remote charging of a quantum battery (QB) is hindered by radiative leakage of the excitation into the photonic environment that acts as a mediator for energy transfer. We consider a charger-battery model consisting of two two-level systems (TLSs) that are locally coupled to two sites of a one-dimensional coupled cavity array. When their transition frequency lies outside the propagation band, the system forms atom-photon bound states with localized photonic components, and the overlap of these components lifts the degeneracy of the even- and odd-parity bound states, yielding an energy splitting that drives coherent energy transfer from the charger to the QB. In this way, the band gap suppresses resonant emission and the localized bound states mediate remote charging. From the parity-resolved spectrum, we relate the charging time to the energy splitting and the charged ergotropy to the fraction of TLS population on the bound states. Bound states closer to the band edge extend the interaction range of the TLSs but contain a large photonic fraction and are consequently more susceptible to photon loss.