Möbius-Ingham protocols achieve single-cycle ground-state cooling in free-fermion and interacting models at strong system-bath coupling

The work constructs time-dependent ancilla ramps and couplings that operate in the strong-coupling regime, bypassing the slow rates of weak-coupling Lindblad constructions. Exact mapping to resonant excitation transfer allows optimization that maximizes ground-state population transfer while minimizing non-adiabatic excitations within one cycle. Benchmarks on Ising, t-V, and 2D Fermi-Hubbard models show the protocols lie on the Pareto frontier for steady-state error versus cooling time.

Strong coupling enables faster thermalization relevant to near-term quantum simulators and fault-tolerant architectures where weak-coupling assumptions break down. Prior dissipative protocols typically required many cycles or weak baths; the new family trades controlled heating for dramatically reduced physical time. The single-cycle Gibbs-state extension further broadens applicability to finite-temperature preparation.

A central limitation remains the free-fermion exact solvability used for protocol design; interacting cases rely on numerical verification without the same analytic guarantees. Scaling to larger system sizes and experimental noise models will determine whether the Pareto gains survive hardware imperfections. Follow-on experiments on superconducting or trapped-ion platforms could test the predicted exponential suppression within 18 months.