Regularized Counterdiabatic Driving for the Quantum Rabi Model

TL;DR

This paper develops a regularized variational approach for counterdiabatic driving in the quantum Rabi model, enabling fast, robust state preparation in systems with unbounded Hilbert spaces.

Contribution

It introduces a physically motivated renormalization scheme for variational counterdiabatic protocols applicable to unbounded systems like the quantum Rabi model.

Findings

Identified two distinct CD contributions coupling atomic and field quadratures.

Demonstrated suppression of diabatic excitations across various light-matter coupling regimes.

Showed implementation of CD terms via Floquet engineering.

Abstract

Counter-diabatic (CD) driving provides a powerful route to fast and robust state preparation by suppressing diabatic excitations during finite-time evolution. Yet, deriving analytical CD protocols for complex systems remains challenging, motivating the development of variational approaches. These methods typically rely on minimizing trace-based functionals to construct approximate control Hamiltonians. However, in unbounded systems, such functionals can become ill-defined because of the unbounded bosonic Hilbert space, leading to divergent cost functions and unphysical variational coefficients. Here, we introduce a variational optimization framework equipped with physically motivated renormalization schemes that regularize the trace-based metric by restricting it to relevant displaced and low-energy subspaces. As a paradigmatic example, we apply our method to the quantum Rabi model beyond the dispersive approximation and identify two distinct CD contributions that couple the atomic degree of freedom to the position and momentum quadratures of the field. These terms suppress diabatic excitations across coupling regimes ranging from strong to deep-strong light--matter interaction. We further formulate a fidelity-based quantum optimal-control strategy that bypasses the limitations of trace-based variational methods. Finally, we show that the resulting CD terms can be implemented via Floquet engineering through parametric modulation of the native Hamiltonian. Our results demonstrate that CD driving can be consistently extended to continuous-variable systems with unbounded Hilbert spaces, providing a controlled and scalable framework for quantum control in strongly interacting light-matter platforms.