Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) are fast routes to the final results of slow, adiabatic changes of the controlling parameters of a system. The shortcuts are designed by a set of analytical and ...numerical methods suitable for different systems and conditions. A motivation to apply STA methods to quantum systems is to manipulate them on timescales shorter than decoherence times. Thus shortcuts to adiabaticity have become instrumental in preparing and driving internal and motional states in atomic, molecular, and solid-state physics. Applications range from information transfer and processing based on gates or analog paradigms to interferometry and metrology. The multiplicity of STA paths for the controlling parameters may be used to enhance robustness versus noise and perturbations or to optimize relevant variables. Since adiabaticity is a widespread phenomenon, STA methods also extended beyond the quantum world to optical devices, classical mechanical systems, and statistical physics. Shortcuts to adiabaticity combine well with other concepts and techniques, in particular, with optimal control theory, and pose fundamental scientific and engineering questions such as finding speed limits, quantifying the third law, or determining process energy costs and efficiencies. Concepts, methods, and applications of shortcuts to adiabaticity are reviewed and promising prospects are outlined, as well as open questions and challenges ahead.
We propose a method to speed up adiabatic passage techniques in two-level and three-level atoms extending to the short-time domain their robustness with respect to parameter variations. It ...supplements or substitutes the standard laser beam setups with auxiliary pulses that steer the system along the adiabatic path. Compared to other strategies, such as composite pulses or the original adiabatic techniques, it provides a fast and robust approach to population control.
A method is proposed to cool down atoms in a harmonic trap without phase-space compression as in a perfectly slow adiabatic expansion, i.e., keeping the same populations of instantaneous levels in ...the initial and final traps, but in a much shorter time. This may require that the harmonic trap become transiently an expulsive parabolic potential. The cooling times achieved are shorter than those obtained using optimal-control bang-bang methods and real frequencies.
We present a detailed theoretical analysis of the implementation of shortcut-to-adiabaticity protocols for the fast transport of neutral atoms with atom chips. The objective is to engineer transport ...ramps with durations not exceeding a few hundred milliseconds to provide metrologically relevant input states for an atomic sensor. Aided by numerical simulations of the classical and quantum dynamics, we study the behavior of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an atom chip setup with realistic anharmonic trapping. We detail the implementation of fast and controlled transports over large distances of several millimeters, i.e. distances 1000 times larger than the size of the atomic cloud. A subsequent optimized release and collimation step demonstrates the capability of our transport method to generate ensembles of quantum gases with expansion speeds in the picokelvin regime. The performance of this procedure is analyzed in terms of collective excitations reflected in residual center of mass and size oscillations of the condensate. We further evaluate the robustness of the protocol against experimental imperfections.
We put forward reverse engineering protocols to shape in time the components of the magnetic field to manipulate a single spin, two independent spins with different gyromagnetic factors, and two ...interacting spins in short amount of times. We also use these techniques to setup protocols robust against the exact knowledge of the gyromagnetic factors for the one spin problem, or to generate entangled states for two or more spins coupled by dipole-dipole interactions.
Abstract
We apply quantum optimal control to shape the phase-space distribution of Bose–Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional optical lattice. By a time-dependent modulation of the lattice ...position, determined from optimal control theory, we prepare, in the phase space of each lattice site, translated and squeezed Gaussian states, and superpositions of Gaussian states. Complete reconstruction of these non-trivial states is performed through a maximum likelihood state tomography. As a practical application of our method to quantum simulations, we initialize the atomic wavefunction in an optimal Floquet-state superposition to enhance dynamical tunneling signals.
Sending multiple messages on qubits encoded in different vibrational modes of cold atoms or ions along a transmission waveguide requires us to merge first and then separate the modes at input and ...output ends. Similarly, different qubits can be stored in the modes of a trap and be separated later. We design the fast splitting of a harmonic trap into an asymmetric double well so that the initial ground vibrational state becomes the ground state of one of two final wells, and the initial first excited state becomes the ground state of the other well. This might be done adiabatically by slowly deforming the trap. We speed up the process by inverse engineering a double-function trap using dynamical invariants. The separation (demultiplexing) followed by an inversion of the asymmetric bias and then by the reverse process (multiplexing) provides a population inversion protocol based solely on trap reshaping.
We report on the measurement of the time required for a wave packet to tunnel through the potential barriers of an optical lattice. The experiment is carried out by loading adiabatically a ...Bose-Einstein condensate into a 1D optical lattice. A sudden displacement of the lattice by a few tens of nanometers excites the micromotion of the dipole mode. We then directly observe in momentum space the splitting of the wave packet at the turning points and measure the delay between the reflected and the tunneled packets for various initial displacements. Using this atomic beam splitter twice, we realize a chain of coherent micron-size Mach-Zehnder interferometers at the exit of which we get essentially a wave packet with a negative momentum, a result opposite to the prediction of classical physics.
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