Catalyst-Mediated Charging Quenches Backflow Oscillations in Open Quantum Batteries

The protocol places an off-resonant auxiliary mode symmetrically between charger and battery. The catalyst maintains constant energy expectation value while virtual excitations generate an effective complex coupling that drives an underdamped-to-overdamped crossover, damping coherent oscillations that otherwise deplete battery population inversion. Unassisted bipartite charging exhibits pronounced non-Markovian revivals and poor energy retention. Catalytic mediation accelerates net energy injection and stabilizes population inversion, producing higher asymptotic ergotropy that scales with N_B. The auxiliary mode functions as an energy-invariant conduit with negligible transient population. Prior quantum-battery studies focused on isolated or Markovian regimes and reported ergotropy decay under environmental coupling. This work demonstrates a microscopic mechanism—selective coherence damping via virtual catalyst excitations—that converts dissipative dynamics into a resource for storage stability. Experimental platforms such as superconducting circuits or trapped-ion arrays could test the scheme within two years; success would directly improve work extraction in noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.