Shortcuts to adiabaticity

TL;DR

Shortcuts to adiabaticity are fast methods that replicate the outcomes of slow adiabatic quantum processes, enabling quicker state manipulation in various quantum systems while avoiding decoherence and noise issues.

Contribution

This paper reviews the theoretical techniques, experimental results, and future prospects of shortcuts to adiabaticity in quantum physics.

Findings

Multiple techniques for shortcuts have been developed and experimentally tested.

Shortcuts enable faster quantum state manipulation without loss of fidelity.

Applications span atomic physics, quantum information, and thermodynamics.

Abstract

Quantum adiabatic processes -that keep constant the populations in the instantaneous eigenbasis of a time-dependent Hamiltonian- are very useful to prepare and manipulate states, but take typically a long time. This is often problematic because decoherence and noise may spoil the desired final state, or because some applications require many repetitions. "Shortcuts to adiabaticity" are alternative fast processes which reproduce the same final populations, or even the same final state, as the adiabatic process in a finite, shorter time. Since adiabatic processes are ubiquitous, the shortcuts span a broad range of applications in atomic, molecular and optical physics, such as fast transport of ions or neutral atoms, internal population control and state preparation (for nuclear magnetic resonance or quantum information), cold atom expansions and other manipulations, cooling cycles, wavepacket splitting, and many-body state engineering or correlations microscopy. Shortcuts are also relevant to clarify fundamental questions such as a precise quantification of the third principle of thermodynamics and quantum speed limits. We review different theoretical techniques proposed to engineer the shortcuts, the experimental results, and the prospects.