Related papers: An application of Pontryagin's principle to Browni…
A thermal analogue of the classical brachistochrone problem, which minimizes the connection time between two equilibrium states of harmonically confined Brownian particles, has recently been solved theoretically. Here we report its…
For systems in an externally controllable time-dependent potential, the optimal protocol minimizes the mean work spent in a finite-time transition between two given equilibrium states. For overdamped dynamics which ignores inertia effects,…
Optimal control of levitated nanoparticles subjected to thermal fluctuations is a challenging problem, both theoretically and experimentally. In this Letter, we compute the time-dependent harmonic confining potential that steers, in a…
We propose an optimization strategy to control the dynamics of a stochastic system transferred from one thermal equilibrium to another and apply it experimentally to a Brownian particle in an optical trap under compression. Based on a…
By controlling in real-time the variance of the radiation pressure exerted on an optically trapped microsphere, we engineer temperature protocols that shortcut thermal relaxation when transferring the microsphere from one thermal…
A fundamental and intrinsic property of any device or natural system is its relaxation time relax, which is the time it takes to return to equilibrium after the sudden change of a control parameter [1]. Reducing $tau$ relax , is frequently…
Progress in miniaturized technology allows us to control physical systems at nanoscale with remarkable precision. Experimental advancements have sparked interest in control problems in stochastic thermodynamics, typically concerning a…
We review a series of experimental studies of the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes at the microscale. In particular, in these experiments we studied the fluctuations of the thermodynamic properties of a single optically-trapped…
We study the time-optimal robust control of a two-level quantum system subjected to field inhomogeneities. We apply the Pontryagin Maximum Principle and we introduce a reduced space onto which the optimal dynamics is projected down. This…
In this study, we address a control-constrained optimal control problem pertaining to the transformation of quantum states. Our objective is to navigate a quantum system from an initial state to a desired target state while adhering to the…
We present a method to design driving protocols that achieve fast thermal equilibration of a system of interest using techniques inspired by machine learning training algorithms. For example, consider a Brownian particle manipulated by…
We propose a general framework to study transformations that drive an underdamped Brownian particle in contact with a thermal bath from an equilibrium state to a new one in an arbitrarily short time. To this end, we make use of a time and…
We apply Pontryagin's principle to drive rapidly a trapped overdamped Brownian particle in contact with a thermal bath between two equilibrium states corresponding to different trap stiffness $\kappa$. We work out the optimal time…
Due to their versatility in investigating phenomena in microscopic scales, optical tweezers have been an excellent platform for studying stochastic thermodynamics. In this context, this work presents experimental measurements of the…
In this paper we study a Pontryagin type stochastic maximum principle for the optimal control of a system, where the state dynamics satisfy a stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) driven by a two-parameter (time-space) Brownian…
Optimization of cyclic stochastic heat engines, a topic spanning decades of research, commonly assumes fixed control or response parameters at discrete points in the cycle-a limitation that often leads to experimentally impractical…
We provide a comprehensive analysis of the positional dynamics and average thermodynamics of an overdamped Brownian particle subject to both, harmonic confinement and annealed disorder due to a temporarily fluctuating trap stiffness. We…
We study the thermodynamic cost associated with driving systems between different non-equilibrium steady states. In particular, we combine a linear-response framework for non-equilibrium Markov systems with Lagrangian techniques to minimize…
We study the problem of minimising the connection time between non-equilibrium steady states of the Brownian Gyrator. This is a paradigmatic model in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, an overdamped Brownian particle trapped in a…
Controlling the evolution of nonequilibrium systems to minimize dissipated heat or work is a key goal for designing nanodevices, both in nanotechnology and biology. Progress in computing optimal protocols has thus far been limited to either…