In this review paper, we survey the main concepts and some of the recent developments in quantum feedback control. For consistency and clarity, essential ideas and notations in the theory of open quantum systems and quantum stochastic calculus, as well as continuous measurement theory are developed. We give a general description of quantum feedback control, set up a coherent model and compare it to open-loop designs. Objectives which can be achieved by feedback, such as rapid state preparation and purification or entanglement generation are formulated and analyzed, based on the relevant literature. The connection between quantum feedback and quantum chaos is also described and unravelled which, apart from its theoretical curiosity, can shed more light on some of the intrinsic properties of this control paradigm.
In this review paper, we survey the main concepts and some of the recent developments in quantum feedback control. For consistency and clarity, essential ideas and notations in the theory of open quantum systems and quantum stochastic calculus, as well as continuous measurement theory are developed. We give a general description of quantum feedback control, set up a coherent model and compare it to open-loop designs. Objectives which can be achieved by feedback, such as rapid state preparation and purification or entanglement generation are formulated and analyzed, based on the relevant literature. The connection between quantum feedback and quantum chaos is also described and unravelled which, apart from its theoretical curiosity, can shed more light on some of the intrinsic properties of this control paradigm.
This study presents a survey on quantum control theory and applications from a control systems perspective. Some of the basic concepts and main developments (including open-loop control and closed-loop control) in quantum control theory are reviewed. In the area of open-loop quantum control, the paper surveys the notion of controllability for quantum systems and presents several control design strategies including optimal control, Lyapunov-based methodologies, variable structure control and quantum incoherent control. In the area of closed-loop quantum control, this study reviews closed-loop learning control and several important issues related to quantum feedback control including quantum filtering, feedback stabilisation, linear-quadratic-Gaussian control and robust quantum control.
This review concerns quantum control results and methods that, over the years, have been used in the various operations involving quantum systems. Most of these methods have been originally developed outside the context of quantum physics, and, then, adapted to take into account the specificities of the various quantum physical platforms. Quantum control consists in designing adequate control signals required to efficiently manipulate systems conforming the laws of quantum mechanics in order to ensure the associated desired behaviours and performances. This work attempts to provide a thorough and self-contained introduction and review of the various quantum control theories and their applications. It encompasses issues spanning quantum control modelling, problem formulation, concepts of controllability, as well as a selection of the main control theories. Given the vastness of the field, we tried our best to be as concise as possible, and, for the details, the reader is pointed out to a profusion of references. The contents of the review are organized in the three major classes of control problems - open-loop control, closed-loop learning control, and feedback control - and, for each one of them, we present the main developments in quantum control theory. Finally, concerning the importance of attaining robustness and reliability due to inherent fragility of quantum systems, methods for quantum robust control are also surveyed.
This paper gives a unified approach to feedback control theory of quantum mechanical systems of bosonic modes described by noncommutative operators. A quantum optical closed-loop, including a plant and controller, is developed and its fundamental structural properties are analyzed extensively from a purely quantum mechanical point of view, in order to facilitate the use of control theory in microscopic world described by quantum theory. In particular, an input-output description of quantum mechanical systems which is essential in describing the behavior of the feedback systems is fully formulated and developed. This would then provide a powerful tool for quantum control and pave an avenue that connects control theory to quantum dynamics. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to the basic formulation of quantum feedback control via quantum communication and local operations on an optical device, cavity, that can be regarded as a unit of quantum dynamics of bosonic modes. The formulation introduced in this paper presents the feature intrinsic in quantum feedback systems based on quantum stochastic differential equations. The input-output description provides a basis for developing quantum feedback control through the transfer function representation of quantum feedback systems. In the follow-up paper, the quantum mechanical representation of feedback is further elaborated to yield the control theoretical representation of fundamental notions of quantum theory, uncertainty principle, e.g., and some applications are presented.
This review develops a control-theoretic perspective on measurement-based feedback for continuously monitored open quantum systems, with the main analysis focused on finite-dimensional systems governed by diffusive stochastic master equations. We introduce the relevant state-space, invariant-subspace, and quantum non-demolition structures, interpret quantum filtering as nonlinear observer dynamics, and review open-loop asymptotics, filter stability, state-feedback stabilization, robustness, and reduced-order observer-based control. Particular emphasis is placed on a recurrence--contraction framework, in which Hamiltonian feedback removes non-target invariant obstructions while measurement-induced dynamics provide local exponential contraction. Although the detailed analysis is developed for finite-dimensional diffusive models, the underlying measurement--estimation--feedback architecture is relevant across a broad range of quantum platforms. We further discuss implementation challenges and open problems involving scalable estimation, sampling and delay, adaptation, hybrid and non-Markovian dynamics, practical stability, optimal control, and learning-based design. By organizing these developments around invariance, estimation, recurrence, and contraction, the review provides a tutorial bridge between measurement-based quantum feedback and nonlinear stochastic control.
Quantum engineering has seen rapid growth in the past two decades. Physicists, mathematicians and engineers have been working in unison to control a number of diverse systems in the quantum regime. Quantum control involving feedback has become particularly topical, as using information gained from a system can lead to more stable operation of a control protocol. Quantum feedback can be split into two paradigms: measurement based feedback and coherent feedback. Although it is increasingly evident that retaining the coherence of the feedback signal provides an intrinsic advantage over measurement-based feedback, coherent feedback is still a new paradigm. In particular, there are a limited number of options for coherently estimating a state within a feedback loop. As a step towards better understanding and implementation of quantum feedback, this thesis reports on modelling, estimation and control of quantum systems. The first topic is physical realisability of a variety of quantum systems, especially finite level systems and their outgrowths. Bilinear quantum stochastic differential equations (QSDEs) have to be employed to characterise these systems, which is a significant complement to the previous work on linear QSDEs. In light of the fact that direct and indirect couplings play a vital role in quantum network and control, we also provide state-space models for different classes of coupled open quantum systems incorporating both bidirectional and directional interactions. The second topic is coherent observers and optimal filtering. It is well established that classically estimation using the Kalman filter can provide improved performance over direct feedback schemes, and similar demonstrations have been performed for measurement-based quantum feedback. In this thesis I present coherent observers, including least mean squares estimators, which are driven by the coherent output of a specified quantum plant and designed such that some subset of the observer and plant's expectation values converge in the asymptotic limit. Not only can estimators "observe" mean quantities of quantum plant, but also they can "estimate" quantum correlations such as entanglement. This is of much importance to coherent feedback design in the absence of measurement steps without loss of fidelity. Last but not least, several topics regarding stabilisation and control design of quantum systems are discussed in my thesis. To be specific, tools for quantum stability analysis (e.g. Lyapunov conditions) are provided. Both measurement-based feedback and coherent feedback control design are taken into account. A measurement-based optimal controller for opto-mechanical systems aimed at synchronising different mechanical modes is presented, which is application-oriented. Moreover, A general observer-based coherent feedback control framework is studied, and I demonstrate a pole-placement approach via coherent observers that can be applied to various scenarios.
Feedback plays an essential role in classical control theory, which has been investigated in depth. However, in quantum control theory, the study of feedback is still in its infancy. The paper continues to explore the fundamental characteristics of quantum feedback control for a typical coherent model based on the results of [3] by highlighting the significant differences between quantum feedback control and classical feedback control due to quantum measurement. The paper compares the control performance of quantum feedback control and quantum open-loop control in the cases with and without environment-induced decoherence. It concludes that in some sense, the quantum feedback control is still superior to the quantum open-loop control despite the complicated tradeoff in the feedback case, and further points out that how the quantum measurement-induced-collapse can play a positive role in the quantum feedback control.