Fastest Effectively Adiabatic Transitions for a Collection of Harmonic Oscillators

J Phys Chem A. 2016 May 19;120(19):3218-24. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpca.5b11698. Epub 2016 Feb 5.

Abstract

We discuss fastest effectively adiabatic transitions (FEATs) for a collection of noninteracting harmonic oscillators with shared controllable real frequencies. The construction of such transitions is presented for given initial and final equilibrium states, and the dependence of the minimum time control on the interval of achievable frequencies is discussed. While the FEAT times and associated FEAT processes are important in their own right as optimal controls, the FEAT time is an added feature which provides a measure of the quality of a shortcut to adiabaticity (STA). The FEAT time is evaluated for a previously reported experiment, wherein a cloud of Rb atoms is cooled following a STA recipe that took about twice as long as the FEAT speed limit, a time efficiency of 50%.