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arXiv:1210.2281 · Physical Review A

Engineering arbitrary pure and mixed quantum states

Alexander Nikolaevich Pechen

Published Oct 6, 2011• 63 citations
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Abstract

Controlled manipulation by atomic- and molecular-scale quantum systems has attracted a lot of research attention in recent years. A fundamental problem is to provide deterministic methods for controlled engineering of arbitrary quantum states. This work proposes a deterministic method for engineering arbitrary pure and mixed states of a wide class of quantum systems. The method exploits a special combination of incoherent and coherent controls (incoherent and coherent radiation) and has two properties which are specifically important for manipulating by quantum systems: it realizes the strongest possible degree of their state control, complete density matrix controllability, meaning the ability to steer arbitrary pure and mixed initial states into any desired pure or mixed final state, and it is all-to-one, such that each particular control transfers all initial system states into one target state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.84.042106

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Controlled manipulation by atomic- and molecular-scale quantum systems has attracted a lot of research attention in recent years. A fundamental problem is to provide deterministic methods for controlled engineering of arbitrary quantum states. This work proposes a deterministic method for engineering arbitrary pure and mixed states of a wide class of quantum systems. The method exploits a special combination of incoherent and coherent controls (incoherent and coherent radiation) and has two properties which are specifically important for manipulating by quantum systems: it realizes the strongest possible degree of their state control, complete density matrix controllability, meaning the ability to steer arbitrary pure and mixed initial states into any desired pure or mixed final state, and it is all-to-one, such that each particular control transfers all initial system states into one target state.
We discuss the use of incoherent light as a resource to control the atomic dynamics and review the proposed in Phys. Rev. A 84, 042106 (2011) method for a controlled transfer between any pure and mixed states of quantum systems using a combination of incoherent and coherent light. Formally, the method provides a constructive proof for an approximate open-loop Markovian state-transfer controllability of quantum system in the space of all density matrices---the strongest possible degree of quantum state control.
Conventional approaches for controlling open quantum systems use coherent control which affects the system's evolution through the Hamiltonian part of the dynamics. Such control, although being extremely efficient for a large variety of problems, has limited capabilities, e.g., if the initial and desired target states have density matrices with different spectra or if a control field needs to be designed to optimally transfer different initial states to the same target state. Recent research works suggest extending coherent control by including active manipulation of the non-unitary (i.e., incoherent) part of the evolution. This paper summarizes recent results specifically for incoherent control by the environment (e.g., incoherent radiation or a gaseous medium) with a kinematic description of controllability and landscape analysis.
The ability to perform measurements on a quantum system, combined with the ability to feed back the measurement results via coherent control, allows one to control the system to follow any desired coherent or incoherent quantum dynamics. Such universal dynamical control can be achieved, in principle, through the repeated application of only two coherent control operations and a simple ``Yes-No'' measurement. As a consequence, a quantum computer can simulate an arbitrary open-system dynamics using just one qubit more than required to simulate closed-system dynamics.
A rapid incoherent control scheme for driving a simple qubit system from an initial mixed state to an arbitrary target pure state is proposed. This scheme consists of two main steps: rapid purification of the initial mixed state and time optimal transition from the conditional state to the target state. The first step rapidly purifies the initial mixed state into an almost-pure state of the simple qubit system through continuous measurements and feedback control by the protocol proposed in Jacobs 2003 Physical Review A 67 030301(R). The second step finds a set of suitable time optimal controls to drive the simple qubit system from the conditional state to the target state. The switching time between the first step and the second step is determined by the expected purity and the resultant state is an almost-pure state with a high fidelity with the target state. This rapid incoherent control scheme provides an alternative quantum engineering strategy for the rapid preparation of arbitrary pure states of a simple qubit system.
An incoherent control scheme for state control of locally controllable quantum systems is proposed. This scheme includes three steps: (1) amplitude amplification of the initial state by a suitable unitary transformation, (2) projective measurement of the amplified state, and (3) final optimization by a unitary controlled transformation. The first step increases the amplitudes of some desired eigenstates and the corresponding probability of observing these eigenstates, the second step projects, with high probability, the amplified state into a desired eigenstate, and the last step steers this eigenstate into the target state. Within this scheme, two control algorithms are presented for two classes of quantum systems. As an example, the incoherent control scheme is applied to the control of a hydrogen atom by an external field. The results support the suggestion that projective measurements can serve as an effective control and local controllability information can be used to design control laws for quantum systems. Thus, this scheme establishes a subtle connection between control design and controllability analysis of quantum systems and provides an effective engineering approach in controlling quantum systems with partial controllability information.