Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counterdiabatic driving for trapped-ion displacement in phase space

• Published in: Nature communications 2016-09, Vol.7 (1), p.12999-12999, Article 12999
• Main Authors: An, Shuoming, Lv, Dingshun, del Campo, Adolfo, Kim, Kihwan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 140/125; 639/766/36/1121; 639/766/400/482; 639/766/483/1139; Electrons; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lasers; multidisciplinary; Protocol; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12999

The application of adiabatic protocols in quantum technologies is severely limited by environmental sources of noise and decoherence. Shortcuts to adiabaticity by counterdiabatic driving constitute a powerful alternative that speed up time-evolution while mimicking adiabatic dynamics. Here we report the experimental implementation of counterdiabatic driving in a continuous variable system, a shortcut to the adiabatic transport of a trapped ion in phase space. The resulting dynamics is equivalent to a ‘fast-motion video’ of the adiabatic trajectory. The robustness of this protocol is shown to surpass that of competing schemes based on classical local controls and Fourier optimization methods. Our results demonstrate that shortcuts to adiabaticity provide a robust speedup of quantum protocols of wide applicability in quantum technologies. The application of adiabatic protocols in quantum technologies is limited due to the detrimental action of decoherence. Here the authors demonstrate a shortcut to adiabaticity via counterdiabatic driving in a trapped ion system.