We demonstrate the use of shortcuts to adiabaticity protocols for initialization, read-out, and coherent control of dressed states generated by closed-contour, coherent driving of a single spin. Such dressed states have recently been shown to exhibit efficient coherence protection, beyond what their two-level counterparts can offer. Our state transfer protocols yield a transfer fidelity of ∼99.4(2)% while accelerating the transfer speed by a factor of 2.6 compared to the adiabatic approach. We show bidirectionality of the accelerated state transfer, which we employ for direct dressed state population read-out after coherent manipulation in the dressed state manifold. Our results enable direct and efficient access to coherence-protected dressed states of individual spins and thereby offer attractive avenues for applications in quantum information processing or quantum sensing.We demonstrate the use of shortcuts to adiabaticity protocols for initialization, read-out, and coherent control of dressed states generated by closed-contour, coherent driving of a single spin. Such dressed states have recently been shown to exhibit efficient coherence protection, beyond what their two-level counterparts can offer. Our state transfer protocols yield a transfer fidelity of ∼99.4(2)% while accelerating the transfer speed by a factor of 2.6 compared to the adiabatic approach. We show bidirectionality of the accelerated state transfer, which we employ for direct dressed state population read-out after coherent manipulation in the dressed state manifold. Our results enable direct and efficient access to coherence-protected dressed states of individual spins and thereby offer attractive avenues for applications in quantum information processing or quantum sensing.

arXiv:1901.10488Physical Review LettersMar 5, 201961 citations

Quantum Control via Enhanced Shortcuts to Adiabaticity

Anthony Kiely

Bulletin of the American Physical SocietyMar 18, 20210 citations

Quantum state engineering by shortcuts-to-adiabaticity

Obinna Abah, Ricardo Puebla, Mauro Paternostro

Bulletin of the American Physical SocietyJun 2, 20210 citations

Interference-engineered shortcut to perfect state transfer

Yichuan Zhang, Xuanyu Liu, Zemeng Lin +2 more

Achieving fast, high-fidelity state transfer is fundamental to scalable integrated photonics and quantum information processing. While adiabatic evolution provides inherent robustness against control and fabrication imperfections, its requirement for slow driving leads to impractically long propagation distances in photonic circuits. Existing acceleration strategies, such as shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA), can dramatically shorten evolution times but generally rely on non-native auxiliary couplings or delicate Hamiltonian engineering that are difficult to implement in practice. Here we introduce evolution-pause synthesis (EPS), an interference engineered shortcut protocol that achieves fast, near-perfect state transfer strictly within the native system Hamiltonian. It achieves this by treating transient excitations as coherent resources and canceling their accumulated amplitudes via strategically interleaved pauses. By decoupling relative dynamical phase accumulation from parameter variations, EPS steers open transition trajectories into a closed loop in complex amplitude space, enabling perfect state transfer without auxiliary fields or complex parameter detours. We demonstrate this mechanism in Landau-Zener dynamics and extend it to a multilevel STIRAP process, achieving an 11.8-fold acceleration over the adiabatic baseline. Further, we experimentally validate EPS on a silicon photonic platform, realizing high-fidelity state transfer in a $16\,μ\mathrm{m}$ footprint, a nearly tenfold reduction in device length compared with a $150\,μ\mathrm{m}$ adiabatic reference. EPS offers a general hardware-compatible framework for fast, practical coherent control across wave and quantum platforms.Achieving fast, high-fidelity state transfer is fundamental to scalable integrated photonics and quantum information processing. While adiabatic evolution provides inherent robustness against control and fabrication imperfections, its requirement for slow driving leads to impractically long propagation distances in photonic circuits. Existing acceleration strategies, such as shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA), can dramatically shorten evolution times but generally rely on non-native auxiliary couplings or delicate Hamiltonian engineering that are difficult to implement in practice. Here we introduce evolution-pause synthesis (EPS), an interference engineered shortcut protocol that achieves fast, near-perfect state transfer strictly within the native system Hamiltonian. It achieves this by treating transient excitations as coherent resources and canceling their accumulated amplitudes via strategically interleaved pauses. By decoupling relative dynamical phase accumulation from parameter variations, EPS steers open transition trajectories into a closed loop in complex amplitude space, enabling perfect state transfer without auxiliary fields or complex parameter detours. We demonstrate this mechanism in Landau-Zener dynamics and extend it to a multilevel STIRAP process, achieving an 11.8-fold acceleration over the adiabatic baseline. Further, we experimentally validate EPS on a silicon photonic platform, realizing high-fidelity state transfer in a $16\,μ\mathrm{m}$ footprint, a nearly tenfold reduction in device length compared with a $150\,μ\mathrm{m}$ adiabatic reference. EPS offers a general hardware-compatible framework for fast, practical coherent control across wave and quantum platforms.

physics.opticsCross-listedarXiv:2608.18794Aug 20, 20260 citations

16\,μ\mathrm{m}

footprint, a nearly tenfold reduction in device length compared with a

150\,μ\mathrm{m}

adiabatic reference. EPS offers a general hardware-compatible framework for fast, practical coherent control across wave and quantum platforms.