Transport in a harmonic trap: shortcuts to adiabaticity and robust protocols

TL;DR

This paper develops optimal and robust protocols for fast transport of particles and Bose-Einstein condensates in harmonic traps, minimizing excitations and accommodating multiple species with different frequencies.

Contribution

It introduces a Fourier transform-based method to design transport protocols that are both fast and robust against spring-constant errors, including multi-species transport.

Findings

Protocols achieve no final excitation energy.

Robustness against spring-constant errors demonstrated.

Simultaneous transport of multiple species with different frequencies.

Abstract

We study the fast transport of a particle or a Bose-Einstein condensate in a harmonic potential. An exact expression for the final excitation energy in terms of the Fourier transform of the trap acceleration is used to engineer optimal transport protocols (with no final excitation) that are robust with respect to spring-constant errors. The same technique provides a way to design the simultaneous and robust transport of a few non-interacting species that experience different harmonic trap frequencies in the same trap.