Not-quite-free shortcuts to adiabaticity

ESTEBAN CALZETTA

PHYSICAL REVIEW A - ATOMIC, MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2018 vol. 98 p. 1 - 10

1050-2947

Given the increasing use of shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) to optimize the power and efficiency of quantumheat engines, it becomes a relevant question if there are any theoretical limits to their application. We argue thatquantum fluctuations in the control device which implements the shortcut deflect the system from the adiabaticpath. This not only induces transitions to unwanted final states but also changes the system energy, so thatusing the STA has a definite cost in terms of conventional work definitions. This may be the ultimate cost of anadiabatic shortcut, in the sense that it is present even for a frictionless, zero-temperature driving. We estimate theeffect, to lowest nontrivial order in the derivatives of the time-dependent frequency, on a parametric harmonicoscillator, thus providing a consistency condition for the validity of the classical approximation.