Near-optimal protocols in complex nonequilibrium transformations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to efficiently sample low-dissipation nonequilibrium protocols, demonstrated on a 2D Ising model, revealing a large diversity of near-optimal protocols and advancing control of nanoscale systems.

Contribution

The authors develop a general, efficient sampling scheme for low-dissipation protocols applicable to complex nonequilibrium transformations.

Findings

Large set of protocols with dissipation close to optimal found

Sampling method is efficient in several limiting cases

Protocol diversity increases with relaxed dissipation constraints

Abstract

The development of sophisticated experimental means to control nanoscale systems has motivated efforts to design driving protocols which minimize the energy dissipated to the environment. Computational models are a crucial tool in this practical challenge. We describe a general method for sampling an ensemble of finite-time, nonequilibrium protocols biased towards a low average dissipation. We show that this scheme can be carried out very efficiently in several limiting cases. As an application, we sample the ensemble of low-dissipation protocols that invert the magnetization of a 2D Ising model and explore how the diversity of the protocols varies in response to constraints on the average dissipation. In this example, we find that there is a large set of protocols with average dissipation close to the optimal value, which we argue is a general phenomenon.