Measurement feedback is a versatile and powerful tool, although its performance is limited by several practical imperfections resulting from classical components. This paper shows that, for some typical quantum feedback control problems for state preparation (stabilization of a qubit or a qutrit, spin squeezing, and Fock state generation), the classical feedback operation can be replaced by a fully quantum one such that the state autonomously dissipates into the target or a state close to the target. The main common feature of the proposed quantum operation, which is called coherent feedback, is that it is composed of a series of dispersive and dissipative couplings inspired by the corresponding measurement feedback scheme.
Measurement feedback is a versatile and powerful tool, although its performance is limited by several practical imperfections resulting from classical components. This paper shows that, for some typical quantum feedback control problems for state preparation (stabilization of a qubit or a qutrit, spin squeezing, and Fock state generation), the classical feedback operation can be replaced by a fully quantum one such that the state autonomously dissipates into the target or a state close to the target. The main common feature of the proposed quantum operation, which is called coherent feedback, is that it is composed of a series of dispersive and dissipative couplings inspired by the corresponding measurement feedback scheme.
Quantum computers hold immense promise for solving problems intractable for classical machines, yet their practical realization is hindered by the fragility of quantum states. Quantum Error Correction (QEC) is indispensable for protecting quantum information from environmental noise and operational imperfections. Traditional QEC schemes often rely on measurement-based feedback, which involves performing measurements, processing the classical outcomes, and then applying corrective operations. This process introduces latency, consumes significant resources, and can itself be a source of errors due to the invasive nature of quantum measurement and the classical-quantum interface. Coherent feedback control offers a compelling alternative by allowing the controller to directly interact with the quantum system using quantum fields, without intermediate measurement and classical processing. This maintains the coherence of the quantum information throughout the feedback loop, potentially leading to more robust and faster error correction. This paper explores the theoretical framework and potential advantages of employing coherent feedback control for autonomous QEC. We review existing QEC paradigms, delve into the principles of coherent feedback, and propose how this approach can be integrated into autonomous QEC architectures. Specifically, we investigate its application to bosonic codes and stabilizer codes, discussing the engineering challenges and the prospects for achieving truly fault-tolerant quantum computation by minimizing the classical overhead and enhancing real-time error suppression.
To control a quantum system, recently the coherent feedback method has attracted wide attention thanks to its several advantages over the conventional measurement-based feedback method. However, for nonlinear quantum systems, no systematic guiding principle for designing a coherent feedback controller has been known, while for the measurement case one can employ the so-called quantum non-demolition (QND) feedback method as a systematic strategy. In this paper, we develop a coherent feedback counterpart of this QND-based control strategy. The effectiveness of this proposal is evaluated in some control problems; qubit stabilization and single photon production.
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.
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.
We consider a general quantum system interacting with a bath and derive a master equation in the Lindblad form describing the evolution of the whole quantum system subjected to a measurement-based direct quantum feedback control (MDFC). As an example, we consider a qubit coupled with a dephasing environment under the MDFC. We show that for any given pure target state we can always find the corresponding MDFC scheme, which can effectively drive any initial state into this target state. By using an appropriate MDFC scheme with weak measurement we can stabilize a single qubit initially prepared in one of two nonorthogonal states against dephasing noise. Furthermore, we can effectively protect a kind of known mixed states composed of two nonorthogonal states by using the corresponding MDFC scheme.
The ubiquitous decoherence phenomenon is responsible for the lack of quantum superpositions at the macroscopic scale. It is increasingly difficult to isolate a quantum system from its environment when its size increases. Making use of the weird quantum properties of mesoscopic quantum states thus requires efficient means to combat decoherence. One option is real-time quantum feedback. It features the components of a conventional feedback: measurement of the system's state (sensor), analysis (controller), and feedback action (actuator) aiming to the target state. The random back-action of the measurements by the sensor makes quantum feedback much more difficult than its classical counterpart. Mesoscopic photon number (Fock) states feature a decoherence rate proportional to the photon number. They are thus a simple example of a fragile quantum resource. We demonstrated recently two quantum feedback schemes continuously stabilizing Fock state of a microwave field in a high-quality cavity. Sensitive atoms, crossing the field one at a time, are used as quantum nondemolition (QND) probes of its photon number. The feedback actuator is either a classical source [Sayrin et al., Nature (London) 477, 73 (2011)] or individual resonant atoms emitting or absorbing one photon each [Zhou et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 243602 (2012)]. Both schemes detect the quantum jumps of the photon number and efficiently correct their adverse effects, preparing and preserving a fragile quantum resource. We present an in-depth analysis of our methods, which sheds light onto the fundamental difficulties encountered in quantum feedback, in particular concerning the state estimation algorithm, and onto the ways to circumvent them. These results open the way to informationally optimal QND measurements or to the stabilization of mesoscopic field state superpositions. More generally, they can be cast in a variety of contexts to loosen the tight constraints set by decoherence in quantum metrology and quantum information processing.