Applying classical control techniques to quantum systems: entanglement versus stability margin and other limitations (original) (raw)

Robust control in the quantum domain

Proceedings of the 39th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (Cat. No.00CH37187), 2000

Recent progress in quantum physics has made it possible to perform experiments in which individual quantum systems are monitored and manipulated in real time. The advent of such new technical capabilities provides strong motivation for the development of theoretical and experimental methodologies for quantum feedback control. The availability of such methods would enable radically new approaches to experimental physics in the quantum realm. Likewise, the investigation of quantum feedback control will introduce crucial new considerations to control theory, such as the uniquely quantum phenomena of entanglement and measurement back-action. The extension of established analysis techniques from control theory into the quantum domain may also provide new insight into the dynamics of complex quantum systems. We anticipate that the successful formulation of an input-output approach to the analysis and reduction of large quantum systems could have very general applications in non-equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics and in the nascent field of quantum information theory.

Robust Control Performance for Open Quantum Systems

arXiv: Optimization and Control, 2020

The robustness of quantum control in the presence of uncertainties is important for practical applications but their quantum nature poses many challenges for traditional robust control. In addition to uncertainties in the system and control Hamiltonians and initial state preparation, there is uncertainty about interactions with the environment leading to decoherence. This paper investigates the robust performance of control schemes for open quantum systems subject to such uncertainties. A general formalism is developed, where performance is measured based on the transmission of a dynamic perturbation or initial state preparation error to a final density operator error. This formulation makes it possible to apply tools from classical robust control, especially structured singular value analysis, to assess robust performance of controlled, open quantum systems. However, there are additional difficulties that must be overcome, especially at low frequency ($s\approx0$). For example, at ...

Comparing and Combining Measurement-Based and Driven-Dissipative Entanglement Stabilization

Physical Review X, 2016

We demonstrate and contrast two approaches to the stabilization of qubit entanglement by feedback. Our demonstration is built on a feedback platform consisting of two superconducting qubits coupled to a cavity which are measured by a nearly-quantum-limited measurement chain and controlled by high-speed classical logic circuits. This platform is used to stabilize entanglement by two nominally distinct schemes: a "passive" reservoir engineering method and an "active" correction based on conditional parity measurements. In view of the instrumental roles that these two feedback paradigms play in quantum error-correction and quantum control, we directly compare them on the same experimental setup. Further, we show that a second layer of feedback can be added to each of these schemes, which heralds the presence of a high-fidelity entangled state in realtime. This "nested" feedback brings about a marked entanglement fidelity improvement without sacrificing success probability.

Optimal feedback control of two-qubit entanglement in dissipative environments

Physical Review A, 2016

We study the correction of errors intervening in two-qubit dissipating into their own environments. This is done by resorting to local feedback actions with the aim of preserving as much as possible the initial amount of entanglement. Optimal control is found by first gaining insights from the subsystem purity and then by numerical analysis on the concurrence. This is tantamount to a double optimization, on the actuation and on the measurement precesses. Repeated feedback action is also investigated, thus paving the way for a continuous time formulation and solution of the problem.

Experimental Feedback Control of Quantum Systems Using Weak Measurements

Physical Review Letters, 2010

A goal of the emerging field of quantum control is to develop methods for quantum technologies to function robustly in the presence of noise. Central issues are the fundamental limitations on the available information about quantum systems and the disturbance they suffer in the process of measurement. In the context of a simple quantum control scenario-the stabilization of non-orthogonal states of a qubit against dephasing-we experimentally explore the use of weak measurements in feedback control. We find that, despite the intrinsic difficultly of implementing them, weak measurements allow us to control the qubit better in practice than is even theoretically possible without them. Our work shows that these more general quantum measurements can play an important role for feedback control of quantum systems.

Quantum control robust with respect to coupling with an external environment

Quantum Information Processing, 2014

We study coherent quantum control strategy which is robust with respect to coupling with an external environment. We model this interaction by appending an additional subsystem to the initial system and we choose the strength of the coupling to be proportional to the magnitude of the control pulses. Therefore, to minimize the interaction we impose L1 norm restrictions on the control pulses. In order to efficiently solve this optimization problem we employ the BFGS algorithm. We use three different functions as the derivative of the L1 norm of control pulses: the signum function, a fractional derivative d α |x| dx α , where 0 < α < 1, and the Fermi-Dirac distribution. We show that our method allows to efficiently obtain the control pulses which neglect the coupling with an external environment.

Scaling the robustness of the solutions for quantum controllable problems

Physical Review A, 2011

The major task in quantum control theory is to find an external field that transforms the system from one state to another or executes a predetermined unitary transformation. We investigate the difficulty of computing the control field as the size of the Hilbert space is increased. In the models studied the controls form a small closed subalgebra of operators. Complete controllability is obtained by the commutators of the controls with the stationary Hamiltonian. We investigate the scaling of the computation effort required to converge a solution for the quantum control task with respect to the size of the Hilbert space. The models studied include the double-well Bose Hubbard model with the SU(2) control subalgebra and the Morse oscillator with the Heisenberg-Weil algebra. We find that for initial and target states that are classified as generalized coherent states (GCSs) of the control subalgebra the control field is easily found independent of the size of the Hilbert space. For such problems, a control field generated for a small system can serve as a pilot for finding the field for larger systems. Attempting to employ pilot fields that generate superpositions of GCSs or cat states failed. No relation was found between control solutions of different Hilbert space sizes. In addition the task of finding such a field scales unfavorably with Hilbert space sizes. We demonstrate the use of symmetry to obtain quantum transitions between states without phase information. Implications to quantum computing are discussed. 10 J = 5 J = 10 J = 20 J = 40 J = 80 J = 160 J = 320

Quantum control of two-qubit entanglement dissipation

Journal of Russian Laser Research, 2011

We investigate quantum control of the dissipation of entanglement under environmental decoherence. We show by means of a simple two-qubit model that standard control methods -coherent or open-loop control -will not in general prevent entanglement loss. However, we propose a control method utilising a Wiseman-Milburn feedback/measurement control scheme which will effectively negate environmental entanglement dissipation.

Robust control of quantum information

Chemical Physics, 2003

Errors in the control of quantum systems may be classified as unitary, decoherent and incoherent. Unitary errors are systematic, and result in a density matrix that differs from the desired one by a unitary operation. Decoherent errors correspond to general completely positive superoperators, and can only be corrected using methods such as quantum error correction. Incoherent errors can also be described, on average, by completely positive superoperators, but can nevertheless be corrected by the application of a locally unitary operation that "refocuses" them. They are due to reproducible spatial or temporal variations in the system's Hamiltonian, so that information on the variations is encoded in the system's spatiotemporal state and can be used to correct them. In this paper liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is used to demonstrate that such refocusing effects can be built directly into the control fields, where the incoherence arises from spatial inhomogeneities in the quantizing static magnetic field as well as the radio-frequency control fields themselves. Using perturbation theory, it is further shown that the eigenvalue spectrum of the completely positive superoperator exhibits a characteristic spread that contains information on the Hamiltonians' underlying distribution.

Stabilizing Quantum States and Automatic Error Correction by Dissipation Control

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2017

In this paper an extended scalability condition is proposed to achieve the ground-state stability for a class of multipartite quantum systems which may involve two-body interactions, and an explicit procedure to construct the dissipation control is presented. Moreover, we show that dissipation control can be used for automatic error correction in addition to stabilization. We demonstrate the stabilization and error correction of three-qubit repetition code states using dissipation control.