Vacuum radiation versus shortcuts to adiabaticity

Abstract

The nonadiabatic dynamic of the electromagnetic field triggers photons generation from the quantum vacuum. Shortcuts to adiabaticity, instead, are protocols that mimic the field's adiabatic dynamic in a finite time. Here, we show how the counterdiabatic term of the transitionless tracking algorithm cancels out, exactly, the term responsible for the photon production in the dynamical Casimir effect. This result suggests that the energy of producing photons out of the vacuum is related to the energetic cost of the shortcut. Furthermore, if the system operates under a quantum thermodynamic cycle, we confirm the equivalence between the adiabatic and nonadiabatic work outputs. Finally, our study reveals that identifying these unreported observations can only be possible using the so-called effective Hamiltonian approach.