Geodesic Path for the Minimal Energy Cost in Shortcuts to Isothermality

Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Jun 10;128(23):230603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.230603.

Abstract

Shortcuts to isothermality are driving strategies to steer the system to its equilibrium states within finite time, and enable evaluating the impact of a control promptly. Finding the optimal scheme to minimize the energy cost is of critical importance in applications of this strategy in pharmaceutical drug tests, biological selection, and quantum computation. We prove the equivalence between designing the optimal scheme and finding the geodesic path in the space of control parameters. Such equivalence allows a systematic and universal approach to find the optimal control to reduce the energy cost. We demonstrate the current method with examples of a Brownian particle trapped in controllable harmonic potentials.