Information engines produce mechanical work through measurement and adaptive control. For information engines, the principal challenge lies in how to store the generated work for subsequent utilization. Here, we report an experimental demonstration where quantized mechanical motion serves as a quantum battery and gets charged in repeated cycles by a single trapped-ion information engine. This is enabled by a key technological advancement in rapid state discrimination, allowing us to suppress measurement-induced disturbances. Consequently, we were able to obtain a charging efficiency over 50\% of the theoretical limit at the optimal temperature. The experimental results substantiate that this approach can render trapped ions a promising platform for microscopic information engines with potential applications in the future upon scaling up.
@article{arxiv.2408.14373,
title = {A Single-Ion Information Engine for Charging Quantum Battery},
author = {Jialiang Zhang and Pengfei Wang and Wentao Chen and Zhengyang Cai and Mu Qiao and Riling Li and Yingye Huang and Haonan Tian and Henchao Tu and Kaifeng Cui and Leilei Yan and Junhua Zhang and Jingning Zhang and Manhong Yung and Kihwan Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.14373},
year = {2025}
}