Single-shot ground-state preparation via strongly coupled baths

arXiv:2611.07021v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Preparing ground and thermal states of quantum many-body systems is a central task in quantum simulation. Dissipative protocols have emerged as a promising solution for both near-term and fault-tolerant hardware, but most constructions rely on weak system-bath coupling, leading to slow cooling. Here, we construct cooling protocols at strong system-bath coupling, and demonstrate accurate state preparation within even a single cooling cycle. Our protocols combine dynamically ramped ancilla energy levels with time-dependent couplings to optimize the trade-off between cooling error and physical time.