Non-Hermitian shortcut to adiabaticity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-Hermitian shortcut to adiabaticity that enables fast quantum state transfer by adding imaginary terms to the Hamiltonian, eliminating nonadiabatic losses without increasing coupling.

Contribution

It presents a novel non-Hermitian approach to achieve rapid adiabatic-like population transfer in two-level quantum systems.

Findings

Effective cancellation of nonadiabatic losses demonstrated.

Applicable to Landau-Zener and Allen-Eberly models.

Allows arbitrarily fast population transfer without increasing coupling.

Abstract

A non-Hermitian shortcut to adiabaticity is introduced. By adding an imaginary term in the diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian of a two state quantum system, we show how one can cancel the nonadiabatic losses and perform an arbitrarily fast population transfer, without the need to increase the coupling. We apply this technique to two popular level-crossing models: the Landau-Zener model and the Allen-Eberly model.