Efficient Fast Forward Protocol in a Heat Engine

Fast forward protocols can be used to engineer rapid adiabatic processes by dynamically tuning available control parameters. For open systems, constructing local transitionless protocols can be a challenging task since one cannot access the bath degrees of freedom needed to prevent non-adiabatic excitations. We present a local fast forward protocol for a particle in a tunable harmonic potential coupled to a bath of optical phonons, which we treat microscopically without making the standard Markovian or Lindbladian approximations. This protocol can be experimentally realized by dynamically tuning the system's frequency and driving its coupling to the environment with a high-frequency Floquet drive. We show that this protocol effectively implements a rapid isothermal process and apply it to realize a fast heat engine operating near the Carnot efficiency.