Shortcuts to adiabaticity

David Guéry-Odelin (Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse) — January 19, 2017

Abstract :
In quantum physics, adiabatic processes keep constant the populations in the instantaneous eigenbasis of a time-dependent Hamiltonian. They are very useful to prepare and manipulate states, but take typically a long time. This is often problematic because decoherence and noise may spoil the desired final state, or because some applications require many repetitions.
The aim of this talk is to give an overview of the so-called “Shortcuts to adiabaticity” protocols that are alternative fast processes which reproduce the same final populations, or even the same final state, as the adiabatic process in a finite, shorter time. Since adiabatic processes are ubiquitous, the shortcuts span a broad range of applications in atomic, molecular, and optical physics, such as fast transport of ions or neutral atoms, internal population control, and state preparation (for nuclear magnetic resonance or quantum information), cold atom expansions and other manipulations, cooling cycles, wave-packet splitting, and many-body state engineering or correlations microscopy. Shortcuts are also relevant to clarify fundamental questions such as quantum speed limits.
We will review different theoretical techniques that have been developed recently to engineer the shortcuts. As we shall see, those techniques have also been extended in standard statistical physics to engineer the motion of a Brownian particle and the motion of a micromechanical oscillator in contact with a thermal bath.

Biography :
David Guéry-Odelin is Professor at Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse and coordinates the cold-atom group of Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats Réactivité (LCAR). His scientific interests focus on Bose-Einstein condensation, atom optics and quantum engineering. David was awarded the Servant Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 2013.

You can also watch this video on savoirs.ens.fr or YouTube