Numerically Optimizing Shortcuts to Adiabaticity: A Hybrid Control Strategy

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid analytical and numerical optimization method to improve shortcuts to adiabaticity in quantum control, demonstrated on ion separation with significant performance gains.

Contribution

It introduces a combined analytical-numerical approach to optimize quantum control protocols, especially for complex systems like ion separation.

Findings

Achieved up to 1000-fold improvement in control performance.

The hybrid method explores a complex control landscape effectively.

No additional experimental cost incurred for the improved protocols.

Abstract

Achieving fast, excitation-free quantum control is a vital challenge in modern quantum technologies. In many cases, shortcuts to adiabaticity enable fast adiabatic-like protocols, yet determining control parameters that satisfy practical constraints is often challenging in complex systems. Here, we combine an analytical shortcut to adiabaticity approach with several numerical optimization methods to boost the performance of the protocol. As a proof-of-principle for this hybrid approach, we study a particularly intricate control problem, the separation of two trapped ions. We show that this analytical-numerical approach, along with the physical insight gained through the variety of suboptimal solutions, leads to the exploration of new solutions in a complex landscape that yield improvements of up to 3 orders of magnitude. Moreover, this improvement comes with no additional cost from an experimental point of view.