  A shortcut to adiabaticity (STA) is concerned with the fast and robust
manipulation of the dynamics of a quantum system that reproduces the effect of
an adiabatic process. A recently proposed method enables the generation of
shortcuts from a prescribed slow dynamics by simply rescaling the time variable
of the quantum evolution operator [B. L. Bernardo, Phys. Rev. Research 2,
013133 (2020)]. This time-rescaling method does not demand knowledge about the
eigenvalues and eigenstates of the Hamiltonian, and in many cases no additional
coupling fields. Here, we use this approach to study the problem of speeding up
the population inversion of a two-level quantum system. The fidelity of the
dynamics versus systematic errors in the control parameters are shown to be
comparable with other STA schemes. From a quantum thermodynamic viewpoint, we
also demonstrate that the main properties of the distribution of work required
to drive the system along the shortcuts are unchanged with respect to the
reference (slow) protocol.
