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Entropy

Fast and Robust Optical Cooling via Shortcut to Adiabaticity

Zhiyu Wang, Jie Lu

Published Aug 11, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Optical cooling is a key technique for preparing ultracold atoms in quantum technologies and precision experiments. We employ shortcut-to-adiabaticity (STA) techniques to accelerate and stabilize laser-based atomic cooling protocols. This approach improves the performance of conventional adiabatic momentum transfer schemes by addressing key limitations such as Doppler shifts, laser intensity fluctuations, and spontaneous emission. We first examine two- and three-level atomic systems subjected to counter-propagating laser pulses that induce momentum reduction through photon recoil. STA methods are then employed to construct pulse sequences that are robust against detuning errors and amplitude noise, outperforming standard π-pulse schemes in resilience. Meanwhile, we analyze the dissipative dynamics during the momentum transfer and demonstrate the superiority of the STA protocol in enhancing momentum transfer efficiency via accelerated control. The results demonstrate that STA can significantly improve both the efficiency and robustness of cooling. These findings have implications for applications in atomic physics, quantum information processing, and precision metrology.

DOI
10.3390/e27080851

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Optical cooling is a key technique for preparing ultracold atoms in quantum technologies and precision experiments. We employ shortcut-to-adiabaticity (STA) techniques to accelerate and stabilize laser-based atomic cooling protocols. This approach improves the performance of conventional adiabatic momentum transfer schemes by addressing key limitations such as Doppler shifts, laser intensity fluctuations, and spontaneous emission. We first examine two- and three-level atomic systems subjected to counter-propagating laser pulses that induce momentum reduction through photon recoil. STA methods are then employed to construct pulse sequences that are robust against detuning errors and amplitude noise, outperforming standard π-pulse schemes in resilience. Meanwhile, we analyze the dissipative dynamics during the momentum transfer and demonstrate the superiority of the STA protocol in enhancing momentum transfer efficiency via accelerated control. The results demonstrate that STA can significantly improve both the efficiency and robustness of cooling. These findings have implications for applications in atomic physics, quantum information processing, and precision metrology.
The shortcut to adiabaticity (STA) is a powerful technique to speed up population transfer via quantum coherent control. This paper demonstrates that STA provides a fast, robust, and efficient population transfer compared to the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. In the ideal situation of a closed system, STA is insensitive to the detunings and Rabi frequencies, and the undesired diabatic transitions could be eliminated by the auxiliary pulses, so the complete population transfer from the initial state to the target state in the designed adiabatic passage can be rapidly achieved against the inevitable amplitude noises of the interactions and systematic errors. When we consider the situation including the environment noises, spontaneous emission from the intermediate state $|2\ensuremath{\rangle}$ in STA can be sufficiently ignored in the cases of the dark-state evolution and quantum overdamping, since the state $|2\ensuremath{\rangle}$ is thoroughly separated from the three-state system. Moreover, the diabatic transitions induced by the spontaneous emission are also sufficiently suppressed in STA.
Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) are a collection of quantum control techniques that achieve high fidelity outside of the adiabatic regime. Recently an extension to shortcuts to adiabaticity was proposed by the authors [Whitty, Kiely, and Ruschhaupt, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 023360 (2020)]. This method, enhanced shortcuts to adiabaticity (eSTA), provides an extension to the original STA control functions and allows effective control of systems not amenable to STA methods. It is conjectured that eSTA schemes also enjoy an improved stability over their STA counterparts. We provide numerical evidence of this claim by applying eSTA to fast atomic transport using an optical lattice and evaluating appropriate stability measures. We show that the eSTA schemes not only produce higher fidelities but also remain more stable against errors than the original STA schemes.
Fast and robust quantum control protocols are often based on an idealized approximate description of the relevant quantum system.While this may provide a performance that is close to optimal, improvements can be made by incorporating elements of the full system representation.We propose a technique for such scenarios, called enhanced shortcuts to adiabaticity (eSTA).The eSTA method works for previously intractable Hamiltonians by providing an analytical correction to existing STA protocols.This correction can be easily calculated, and the resulting protocols are outside the class of STA schemes.We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method for three distinct cases: manipulation of an internal atomic state beyond the rotating-wave approximation, transport of a neutral atom in an optical Gaussian trap, and transport of two trapped ions in an anharmonic trap.
We propose and demonstrate a novel laser cooling mechanism applicable to particles with narrow-linewidth optical transitions. By sweeping the frequency of counter-propagating laser beams in a sawtooth manner, we cause adiabatic transfer back and forth between the ground state and a long-lived optically excited state. The time-ordering of these adiabatic transfers is determined by Doppler shifts, which ensures that the associated photon recoils are in the opposite direction to the particle's motion. This ultimately leads to a robust cooling mechanism capable of exerting large forces via a weak transition and with reduced reliance on spontaneous emission. We present a simple intuitive model for the resulting frictional force, and directly demonstrate its efficacy for increasing the total phase-space density of an atomic ensemble. We rely on both simulation and experimental studies using the 7.5 kHz linewidth 1 S 0 to 3 P 1 transition in 88 Sr. The reduced reliance on spontaneous emission may allow this adiabatic sweep method to be a useful tool for cooling particles that lack closed cycling transitions, such as molecules.
Movable single atoms have drawn significant attention for their potential as flying quantum memory in non-local, dynamic quantum computing architectures. However, when dynamic optical tweezers are employed to control atoms opto-mechanically, conventional methods such as adiabatic controls and constant jerk controls are either inherently slow or induce mechanical heating, leading to atom loss over long distances or at high speeds. To address these challenges, we explore the method known as shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) as an efficient alternative for fast and reliable atom transport. We present a series of proof-of-concept experiments demonstrating that STA-based optical tweezer trajectories can achieve both rapid and reliable single-atom transport. These experiments include moving atoms between two locations, adjusting speeds en route, and navigating curved trajectories. Our results indicate that atoms can be transported with a constant acceleration on average over distances that is only limited by trap lifetime, while effectively suppressing vibrational heating. This makes STA methods particularly well-suited for long-distance atom transport, potentially spanning distances over centimeter scales, such as between quantum information devices.
Abstract Cavity optomechanical systems converting quantum state between photons facilitate the development of scalable quantum information processors. The control of state transfer in such systems require producing fast and robust transfer to the target state with high fidelity. Shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) has recently been proved a powerful method for performing fast quantum state conversion in optomechanical systems, which is, however, not robust enough against deviations in control parameters. Here a scheme to realize robust photon state transfer in a universal cavity optomechanical system by combining STA with optimal control technique (OCT) is proposed. Minimizing systematic error sensitivities with adjustable optimization parameters allows to control simultaneously the transfer speed, fidelity, and robustness against errors. Numerical results show that the optimized scheme is insensitive to deviations in optomechanical coupling and frequency detuning over a broad range. The effects of dissipation on the transfer fidelity are also examined for practical implementation of the scheme in realistic scenarios.