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arXiv:1302.0037 · Quantum Measurements and Quantum Metrology

Unavoidable decoherence in the quantum control of an unknown state

D. Kielpinski, Rachael Briggs, Howard M. Wiseman

Published Feb 6, 2013• 2 citations
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Abstract

Abstract A common objective for quantum control is to force a quantum system, initially in an unknown state, into a particular target subspace. We show that if the subspace is required to be a decoherence-free subspace of dimension greater than 1, then such control must be decoherent. That is, it will take almost any pure state to a mixed state. We make no assumptions about the control mechanism, but our result implies that for this purpose coherent control offers no advantage, in principle, over the obvious measurement-based feedback protocol.

DOI
10.2478/qmetro-2013-0001

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Abstract A common objective for quantum control is to force a quantum system, initially in an unknown state, into a particular target subspace. We show that if the subspace is required to be a decoherence-free subspace of dimension greater than 1, then such control must be decoherent. That is, it will take almost any pure state to a mixed state. We make no assumptions about the control mechanism, but our result implies that for this purpose coherent control offers no advantage, in principle, over the obvious measurement-based feedback protocol.
Quantum systems can be controlled by other quantum systems in a reversible way, without any information leaking to the outside of the system-controller compound. Such coherent quantum control is deterministic, is less noisy than measurement-based feedback control, and has potential applications in a variety of quantum technologies, including quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum metrology. Here we introduce a coherent feedback protocol, consisting of a sequence of identical interactions with controlling quantum systems, that steers a quantum system from an arbitrary initial state towards a target state. We determine the broad class of such coherent feedback channels that achieve convergence to the target state, and then stabilize as well as protect it against noise. Our results imply that also weak system-controller interactions can counter noise if they occur with suitably high frequency. We present an example of a control scheme that does not require knowledge of the target state encoded in the controllers, which could be the result of a quantum computation. It thus provides a mechanism for autonomous, purely quantum closed-loop control.
For any specified pure state of quantum open system, we can construct a kind of quantum generalized measurement (QGM) that the state of the system after measurement will be deterministically collapsed into the specified pure state from any initial state. In other words, any pure state of quantum open system is reachable by QGM. Subsequently, whether the qubit is density matrix controllable is discussed in the case of pure dephasing. Our results reveal that combining QGM with coherent control will enhance the ability of controlling the quantum open system. Furthermore, it is found that the ability to perform QGM on the quantum open system, combined with the ability of coherence control and conditions of decoherence-free subspace, allows us to suppress quantum decoherence.
The problem of quantum state control in open quantum systems based on the Lyapunov method is studied. The control laws are designed to drive the system to a pure target state in decoherence-free subspace (DFS) in the interaction picture, where the average of an observable operator P is chosen as a Lyapunov function. By analyzing the positive limit set via Barbalat’s lemma, we propose a sufficient condition on the observable operator such that the positive limit set only contains the target state. Under this condition, it is proved that the control laws can drive the open system to any pure target state in DFS in the interaction picture. Also, we provide a method to construct the observable operator via Schmidt orthogonalization. Numerical simulations on a three-level system validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
We study the problem of driving an unknown initial mixed quantum state onto a known pure state without using unitary transformations. This can be achieved, in an efficient manner, with the help of sequential measurements on at least two unbiased bases. However here we found that, when the system is affected by a decoherence mechanism, only one observable is required in order to achieve the same goal. In this way the decoherence can assist the process. We show that, depending on the sort of decoherence, the process can converge faster or slower than the method implemented by means of two complementary observables.
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.
When a quantum system interacts with its environment, the so-called decoherence effect will normally destroy the coherence in the quantum state and the entanglement between its subsystems. We propose a feedback control strategy based on quantum weak measurements to protect coherence and entanglement of the quantum state against environmental disturbance. For a one-qubit quantum system under amplitude damping and dephasing decoherence channels, our strategy can preserve the coherence based on the measured information about the population difference between its two levels. For a two-qubit quantum system disentangled by independent amplitude damping and dephasing decoherence channels, the designed feedback control can preserve coherence between the ground state and the highest excited states by tuning the coupling strength between the two qubits, and at the same time minimize the loss of entanglement between the two qubits. As a consequence of dynamic symmetry, the generalization of these results derives the concept of control-induced decoherence-free observable subspace, for which several criteria are provided.