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Counterdiabatic Driving with Performance Guarantees

Jernej Rudi Finžgar1,2,*, Simone Notarnicola3,4,5, Madelyn Cain3, Mikhail D. Lukin3, and Dries Sels6,7

  • *Contact author: jernej-rudi.finzgar@tum.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 180602 – Published 29 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pqhl-nbtk

Abstract

Counterdiabatic (CD) driving has the potential to speed up adiabatic quantum state preparation by suppressing unwanted excitations. However, existing approaches either require intractable classical computations or are based on approximations that do not have performance guarantees. We propose and analyze a nonvariational, system-agnostic CD expansion method and analytically show that it converges exponentially quickly in the expansion order. In finite systems, the required resources scale inversely with the spectral gap, which we argue is asymptotically optimal. To extend our method to the thermodynamic limit and suppress errors stemming from high-frequency transitions, we leverage finite-time adiabatic protocols. In particular, we show that a time determined by the quantum speed limit is sufficient to prepare the desired ground state, without the need to optimize the adiabatic trajectory. Numerical tests of our method on the quantum Ising chain show that our method can outperform state-of-the-art variational CD approaches.

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synopsis

A Shortcut to a Ground State

Published 29 October, 2025

Theorists have proposed a universal recipe for trying to quickly prepare a system in a desired ground state without exciting it.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 180602– Published 29 October, 2025
  • Received 11 March 2025
  • Revised 28 June 2025
  • Accepted 24 September 2025
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