Dynamical invariant based shortcut to equilibration in open quantum systems

Abstract We propose using the dynamical invariants, also known as the Lewis–Riesenfeld invariants, to speed-up the equilibration of a driven open quantum system. This allows us to reverse engineer the time-dependent master equation that describes the dynamics of the open quantum system and systematically derive a protocol that realizes a shortcut to equilibration. The method does not require additional constraints on the timescale of the dynamics beside the Born–Markov approximation and can be generically applied to boost single particle quantum engines significantly. We demonstrate this with the damped harmonic oscillator, and show that our protocol can achieve high-fidelity control on shorter timescales than simple non-optimized protocols. We find that the system is heated during the dynamics to speed-up the equilibration, which can be considered as an analogue of the Mpemba effect in quantum control.