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arXiv:2511.15084

Work-minimizing protocols in driven-dissipative quantum systems: An impulse-ansatz approach

Masaaki Tokieda

quant-phSubmitted Nov 19, 2025• Announced Nov 20, 2025• 0 citations• Revised Sep 7, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Nov 19, 2025v2 · Sep 7, 2026
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Abstract

The second law of thermodynamics sets a lower bound on the work required to drive a system between thermal equilibrium states, with equality attained in the quasistatic limit. For finite-time processes, work in excess of this bound is inevitably dissipated, motivating the search for driving protocols that minimize this excess work. While classical stochastic systems have been extensively explored, quantum analyses remain limited and often rely on Markovian master equations valid only in the weak-coupling regime. Here, we study minimal work protocols for representative two-level systems coupled to a harmonic-oscillator bath using a numerically exact method. Inspired by known optimal solutions for Brownian oscillators, we introduce an impulse ansatz that incorporates possible boundary impulses and test it across a wide range of bath parameters. We find that impulse-like features remain nearly optimal in the quantum, non-Markovian regime at short times. We also identify cases in which the widely used Markovian master equation fails even at weak coupling, highlighting the necessity of going beyond standard approximations in the quantum regime for finite-time thermodynamic optimization.

Comments
8+8 pages, 5+2 figures. Major updates include replacing the Nelder-Mead optimizer with L-BFGS-B for the parameter optimization with a smaller convergence tolerance

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The second law of thermodynamics sets a lower bound on the work required to drive a system between thermal equilibrium states, with equality attained in the quasistatic limit. For finite-time processes, work in excess of this bound is inevitably dissipated, motivating the search for driving protocols that minimize this excess work. While classical stochastic systems have been extensively explored, quantum analyses remain limited and often rely on Markovian master equations valid only in the weak-coupling regime. Here, we study minimal work protocols for representative two-level systems coupled to a harmonic-oscillator bath using a numerically exact method. Inspired by known optimal solutions for Brownian oscillators, we introduce an impulse ansatz that incorporates possible boundary impulses and test it across a wide range of bath parameters. We find that impulse-like features remain nearly optimal in the quantum, non-Markovian regime at short times. We also identify cases in which the widely used Markovian master equation fails even at weak coupling, highlighting the necessity of going beyond standard approximations in the quantum regime for finite-time thermodynamic optimization.
We construct a quantum Markovian master equation for a driven system coupled to a thermal bath. The derivation utilizes an explicit solution of the propagator of the driven system. This enables the validity of the master equation to be extended beyond the adiabatic limit. The nonadiabatic master equation (NAME) is derived employing the weak system-bath coupling limit. The NAME is valid when a separation of timescales exists between the bath dynamics and the external driving. In contrast to the adiabatic master equation, the NAME leads to coupled equations of motion for the population and coherence. We employ the NAME to solve the example of an open driven time-dependent harmonic oscillator. For the harmonic oscillator the NAME predicts the emergence of coherence associated with the dissipation term. As a result of the nonadiabatic driving the thermalization rate is suppressed. The solution is compared with both numerical calculations and the adiabatic master equation.
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open system states, and on a principle of minimal dissipation. This principle leads to a unique prescription for the decomposition of the master equation into a Hamiltonian part representing coherent time evolution and a dissipator part describing dissipation and decoherence. Employing this decomposition we demonstrate how to define work, heat and entropy production, formulate the first and second law of thermodynamics, and establish the connection between violations of the second law and quantum non-Markovianity.
Abstract The standard weak-coupling approximations associated to open quantum systems have been extensively used in the description of a two-level quantum system, qubit, subjected to relatively weak dissipation compared with the qubit frequency. However, recent progress in the experimental implementations of controlled quantum systems with increased levels of on-demand engineered dissipation has motivated precision studies in parameter regimes that question the validity of the approximations, especially in the presence of time-dependent drive fields. In this paper, we address the precision of weak-coupling approximations by studying a driven qubit through the numerically exact and non-perturbative method known as the stochastic Liouville–von Neumann equation with dissipation. By considering weak drive fields and a cold Ohmic environment with a high cutoff frequency, we use the Markovian Lindblad master equation as a point of comparison for the SLED method and study the influence of the bath-induced energy shift on the qubit dynamics. We also propose a metric that may be used in experiments to map the regime of validity of the Lindblad equation in predicting the steady state of the driven qubit. In addition, we study signatures of the well-known Mollow triplet and observe its meltdown owing to dissipation in an experimentally feasible parameter regime of circuit electrodynamics. Besides shedding light on the practical limitations of the Lindblad equation, we expect our results to inspire future experimental research on engineered open quantum systems, the accurate modeling of which may benefit from non-perturbative methods.
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open-system states, and on a principle of minimal dissipation. This principle leads to a unique prescription for the decomposition of the master equation into a Hamiltonian part representing coherent time evolution and a dissipator part describing dissipation and decoherence. Employing this decomposition we demonstrate how to define work, heat, and entropy production, formulate the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and establish the connection between violations of the second law and quantum non-Markovianity.
We present a technique for efficiently transitioning a quantum system from an initial to a final stationary state in less time than is required by an adiabatic (quasistatic) process. Our approach makes use of Nelson's stochastic quantization, which represents the quantum system as a classical Brownian process. Thanks to this mathematical analogy, known protocols for classical overdamped systems can be translated into quantum protocols. In particular, one can use classical methods to find optimal quantum protocols that minimize both the time duration and some other cost function to be freely specified. We have applied this method to the time-dependent harmonic oscillator and tested it on two different cost functions: (i) the cumulative energy of the system over time and (ii) the dynamical phase of the wave function. In the latter case, it is possible to construct protocols that are "adiabatically optimal," i.e., they minimize their distance from an adiabatic process for a given duration.
We derive a Markovian master equation that models the evolution of systems subject to driving and control fields. Our approach combines time rescaling and weak-coupling limits for the system-environment interaction with a secular approximation. The derivation makes use of the adiabatic time-evolution operator in a manner that allows for the efficient description of strong driving, while recovering the well-known adiabatic master equation in the appropriate limit. To illustrate the effectiveness of our approach, firstly we apply it to the paradigmatic case of a two-level (qubit) system subject to a form of periodic driving that remains unsolvable using a Floquet representation and lastly we extend this scenario to the situation of two interacting qubits, the first driven while the second one directly in contact with the environment. We demonstrate the reliability and broad scope of our approach by benchmarking the solutions of the derived reduced time evolution against numerically exact simulations using tensor networks. Our results provide rigorous conditions that must be satisfied by phenomenological master equations for driven systems that do not rely on first-principles derivations.