The design of efficient quantum information processing will rely on optimal nonequilibrium transitions of driven quantum systems. Building on a recently-developed geometric framework for computing optimal protocols for classical systems driven in finite-time, we construct a general framework for optimizing the average information entropy for driven quantum systems. Geodesics on the parameter manifold endowed with a positive semi-definite metric correspond to protocols that minimize the average information entropy production in finite-time. We use this framework to explicitly compute the optimal entropy production for a simple two-state quantum system coupled to a heat bath of bosonic oscillators, which has applications to quantum annealing.
@article{arxiv.1506.03864,
title = {Optimal protocols for slowly-driven quantum processes},
author = {Patrick R. Zulkowski and Michael R. DeWeese},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.03864},
year = {2015}
}