Robust multistate quantum control with minimal additional coupling

Abstract The multistate stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is an efficient technique to achieve a selective and accurate population transfer in a chainwise-linked system. However, their efficiency is imperfect due to the nonadiabatic losses from the long runtime of the adiabatic evolution. Here, we focus on realizing a perfect and robust coherent control of the quantum states with optimal shortcut to adiabaticity in a realistic five-state hybrid quantum system. In particular, the optimal shortcut field requires minimal additional coupling (only one coupling strength) to accelerate the adiabatic evolution in this five-state system. Compared to the original STIRAP, the optimal shortcut shows the ultra-high fidelity of quantum state manipulations even though the control parameters of the Hamiltonians are changed in different ways. Furthermore, we study the efficiency of the optimal shortcut field technique in the presence of various experimental errors, such as systematic error, Rabi frequency error, and coupling strength error, and it features a broad range of high efficiencies above 99.9%, showing its robustness against the above errors. The results might shed insight on the further applications of shortcuts to adiabaticity on robust quantum information processing in multi-level quantum systems.