Advanced Quantum Technologies

Shortcut to the Two‐Photon Landau‐Zener‐Stückelberg‐Majorana Transition in a Superconducting Transmon

Xinying Zhu, Liuyang Xu

Published Apr 1, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

ABSTRACT We propose and theoretically demonstrate a tailored shortcut to adiabaticity for accelerating the two‐photon Landau‐Zener‐Stückelberg‐Majorana (LZSM) transition in a superconducting transmon qutrit. Unlike conventional single‐photon LZSM processes, the two‐photon variant involves a virtual intermediate state and arises from a constrained three‐level dynamics with weak anharmonicity, leading to a nonlinear dependence of the effective Rabi coupling on the drive amplitude and stringent requirements on frequency modulation. Using the Lewis‐Riesenfeld invariant method, we construct an exact dynamical invariant for implementing a two‐photon LZSM transition with experimentally feasible, time‐dependent amplitude, and frequency modulation profiles that steer the system along an invariant eigenstate. Our protocol achieves high‐fidelity population transfer from the ground state to the second excited state in just ns, over faster than the reference adiabatic scheme. Crucially, the shortcut preserves the inherent robustness of the LZSM process against drive amplitude errors and exhibits enhanced resilience to decoherence due to the shortened operation time. This work provides a general and practical framework for accelerating higher‐order quantum transitions in multilevel systems, with direct relevance to ultrafast qudit control and scalable quantum information processing.

DOI: 10.1002/qute.202500975

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