Shortcuts to Isothermality: From Ideal to Implementable Protocols

Fast changes in system parameters can mimic adiabatic or isothermal evolution if the system’s Hamiltonian is engineered appropriately. Constructing and implementing these Hamiltonians can be a challenging task, especially in open systems whose non-equilibrium dynamics depend on dissipative interactions with the environment. In this work, we present an ideal dissipationless protocol for a particle in a tunable harmonic potential that maintains a quasi-static isothermal state by means of a counterdiabatic driving field. We compare this benchmark to protocols which also maintain isothermality by controlling only system degrees of freedom, and provide a simple variational minimization approach to generate approximate local escorting potentials which are experimentally realizable.