Quantum work statistics catch shortcut errors that energy alone misses

Shortcuts to adiabaticity let quantum systems evolve quickly without unwanted excitations, but real implementations are imperfect. By examining endpoint quasistatistics — quantum generalizations of work distributions that retain phase information — errors in the shortcut show up linearly in off-diagonal terms, while conventional population measurements only detect them at second order in the error amplitude. Harmonic-oscillator and qubit examples confirm this linear-versus-quadratic contrast. The approach offers a sensitive, phase-aware way to benchmark how well a shortcut protocol actually works.