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arXiv:1511.07695 · Physical Review A

Finite-time Landau-Zener processes and counterdiabatic driving in open systems: Beyond Born, Markov, and rotating-wave approximations

Zhe Sun, Longwen Zhou, Gaoyang Xiao, Dario Poletti, Jiangbin Gong

Published Jan 25, 2016• 35 citations

Abstract

We investigate Landau-Zener processes modeled by a two-level quantum system, with its finite bias energy varied in time and in the presence of a single broadened cavity mode at zero temperature. By applying the hierarchy equation method to the Landau-Zener problem, we computationally study the survival fidelity of adiabatic states without Born, Markov, rotating-wave, or other perturbative approximations. With this treatment it also becomes possible to investigate cases with very strong system-bath coupling. Different from a previous study of infinite-time Landau-Zener processes, the fidelity of the time-evolving state as compared with instantaneous adiabatic states shows nonmonotonic dependence on the system-bath coupling and on the sweep rate of the bias. We then consider the effect of applying a counterdiabatic driving field, which is found to be useful in improving the fidelity only for sufficiently short Landau-Zener processes. Numerically exact results show that different counterdiabatic driving fields can have very different robustness against environment effects. Lastly, using a case study, we discuss the possibility of introducing a dynamical decoupling field in order to eliminate the decoherence effect of the environment and, at the same time, to retain the positive role of a counterdiabatic field. Our work indicates that finite-time Landau-Zener processes with counterdiabatic driving offer a fruitful testbed to understand controlled adiabatic processes in open systems.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.93.012121

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The Landau--Zener (LZ) model describes a two-level quantum system that undergoes an avoided crossing. In the adiabatic limit, the transition probability vanishes. An auxiliary control field

H_\text{CD}

can be reverse-engineered so that the full Hamiltonian

H_0 + H_\text{CD}

reproduces adiabaticity for all parameter values. Our aim is to construct a single control field

H_1

that drives an ensemble of LZ-type Hamiltonians with a distribution of energy gaps.

H_1

works best statistically, minimizing the average transition probability. We restrict our attention to a special class of

H_1

controls, motivated by

H_\text{CD}

. We found a systematic trade-off between instantaneous adiabaticity and the final transition probability. Certain limiting cases with a linear sweep can be treated analytically; one of them being the LZ system with Dirac

δ(t)

function. Comprehensive and systematic numerical simulations support and extend the analytic results.

We investigate the dynamic evolution and thermodynamic process of a driven quantum system immersed in a finite-temperature heat bath. A Born-Markovian quantum master equation is formally derived for the time-dependent system with discrete energy levels. This quantum master equation can be applied to situations with a broad range of driving speeds and bath temperatures and thus be used to study the finite-time quantum thermodynamics even when nonadiabatic transition and dissipation coexist. The dissipative Landau-Zener model is analyzed as an example. The population evolution and transition probability of the model reveal the importance of the competition between driving and dissipation beyond the adiabatic regime. Moreover, local maxima of irreversible entropy production occur at intermediate sweep velocity and finite temperature, which the low-dissipation model cannot describe.

Unitary processes allow for the transfer of work to and from Hamiltonian systems. However, to achieve nonzero power for the practical extraction of work, these processes must be performed within a finite time, which inevitably induces excitations in the system. We show that depending on the time scale of the process and the physical realization of the external driving employed, the use of counterdiabatic quantum driving to extract more work is not always effective. We also show that by virtue of the two-time energy measurement definition of quantum work, the cost of counterdiabatic driving can be significantly reduced by selecting a restricted form of the driving Hamiltonian that depends on the outcome of the first energy measurement. Lastly, we introduce a measure, the exigency, that quantifies the need for an external driving to preserve quantum adiabaticity which does not require knowledge of the explicit form of the counterdiabatic drivings, and can thus always be computed. We apply our analysis to systems ranging from a two-level Landau-Zener problem to many-body problems, namely, the quantum Ising and Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick models.

Unitary processes allow for the transfer of work to and from Hamiltonian systems. However, to achieve non-zero power for the practical extraction of work, these processes must be performed within a finite-time, which inevitably induces excitations in the system. We show that depending on the time-scale of the process and the physical realization of the external driving employed, the use of counterdiabatic quantum driving to extract more work is not always effective. We also show that by virtue of the two-time energy measurement definition of quantum work, the cost of counterdiabatic driving can be significantly reduced by selecting a restricted form of the driving Hamiltonian that depends on the outcome of the first energy measurement. Lastly, we introduce a measure, the exigency, that quantifies the need for an external driving to preserve quantum adiabaticity which does not require knowledge of the explicit form of the counterdiabatic drivings, and can thus always be computed. We apply our analysis to systems ranging from a two-level Landau-Zener problem to many-body problems, namely the quantum Ising and Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick models.

We present experimental results on the preparation of a desired quantum state in a two-level system with the maximum possible fidelity using driving protocols ranging from generalizations of the linear Landau-Zener protocol to transitionless driving protocols that ensure perfect following of the instantaneous adiabatic ground state. We also study the minimum time needed to achieve a target fidelity and explore and compare the robustness of some of the protocols against parameter variations simulating a possible experimental uncertainty. In our experiments, we realize a two-level model system using Bose-Einstein condensates inside optical lattices, but the results of our investigation should hold for any quantum system that can be approximated by a two-level system.

We show that geodesic motion in the Riemannian manifold of quantum states provides a direct route to time-independent counterdiabatic driving. Using the relation between the counterdiabatic Hamiltonian and the quantum metric tensor, we prove that a constant-speed geodesic makes the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the counterdiabatic Hamiltonian constant. For effective two-level systems whose counterdiabatic correction has a fixed operator direction, this further implies that the full counterdiabatic Hamiltonian itself is time independent. We illustrate this result with the Landau-Zener model, three-level Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage and a collectively driven Rydberg ensemble in the blockade regime. Limitations of this approach in realistic many-body systems are discussed, where the two-level reduction is only emergent and leakage out of the effective subspace bounds the achievable speedup. In all cases, time-independent counterdiabatic driving achieves unit-fidelity state preparation on timescales substantially shorter than conventional adiabatic protocols while replacing temporally shaped auxiliary controls by fixed-amplitude fields.