One Bit of Collective Information Is Worth N ln 2 Bits of Local Information in a Many-Body Quantum Battery
Charging a quantum battery through a collective non-adiabatic stroke stores energy in a shared bosonic mode, but part remains locked in correlations with the collective spin and is inaccessible to cyclic unitaries acting on the mode alone. A demon holding one bit can unlock this energy, quantified by the daemonic ergotropy. We investigate the value of one bit and its dependence on where the information is obtained. Two protocols are compared at matched stored energy and matched information, using balanced two-outcome measurements carrying exactly one bit. We find that one bit about the collective coordinate unlocks N ln(2) times as much work as one bit about a single ion. For three stored-energy settings and N = 4-24, the measured scaling exponent is 0.990 +/- 0.043, while double extrapolation gives a prefactor of 0.69298 +/- 0.00044, within 0.02% of ln(2). To leading order, the daemonic gain equals nu mu^2 times the between-outcome variance of Jx, verified numerically to 1.3%. A balanced single-ion measurement resolves 1/4 of this variance, whereas a balanced collective split resolves (ln(2)/4)N. The microscopic origin of the prefactor remains open; a Gaussian median-split estimate of 1/(2pi) is excluded by 9%. One bit recovers a constant fraction of the locked energy independent of N and yields roughly twice as much work per bit as a complete readout, indicating strong diminishing returns. We also show that unnormalized gain comparisons can reverse the conclusion and that the break-even ion number does not collapse onto the Dicke superradiant threshold when the mode frequency is varied.