General quantum resources providing advantages in work-extraction tasks

In developing quantum science and technologies, it is essential to demonstrate so-called , which are performances that can be achieved only with the assistance of quantum resources. Most of the time, different quantum features lead to different advantages. Interestingly, there are certain classes of tasks where quantum advantages are achievable by quantum resources. This work reports such a class of tasks in thermodynamics—we provide a work-extraction task that certifies general quantum resources of both states and channels, suggesting quantum effects can provide nonclassical advantages in work extraction. We also show that such work-extraction tasks can be applied to certify quantum entanglement in a way. As an application, we report a novel type of anomalous energy flow—a type of locally extractable energy that is attributed to the globally distributed entanglement. Finally, we show that the existence of this novel anomalous energy flow is equivalent to measurement incompatibility.