We present a general method to quickly generate high-fidelity control pulses for any continuously-parameterized set of quantum gates after calibrating a small number of reference pulses. We find that interpolating between optimized control pulses for different quantum operations does not immediately yield a high-fidelity intermediate operation. To solve this problem, we propose a method to optimize control pulses specifically to provide good interpolations. We pick several reference operations in the gate family of interest and optimize pulses that implement these operations, then iteratively re-optimize the pulses to guide their shapes to be similar for operations that are closely related. Once this set of reference pulses is calibrated, we can use a straightforward linear interpolation method to instantly obtain high-fidelity pulses for arbitrary gates in the continuous operation space. We demonstrate this procedure on the three-parameter Cartan decomposition of two-qubit gates to obtain control pulses for any arbitrary two-qubit gate (up to single-qubit operations) with consistently high fidelity. Compared to previous neural network approaches, the method is 7.7x more computationally efficient to calibrate the pulse space for the set of all single-qubit gates. Our technique generalizes to any number of gate parameters and could easily be used with advanced pulse optimization algorithms to allow for better translation from simulation to experiment.
We present a general method to quickly generate high-fidelity control pulses for any continuously-parameterized set of quantum gates after calibrating a small number of reference pulses. We find that interpolating between optimized control pulses for different quantum operations does not immediately yield a high-fidelity intermediate operation. To solve this problem, we propose a method to optimize control pulses specifically to provide good interpolations. We pick several reference operations in the gate family of interest and optimize pulses that implement these operations, then iteratively re-optimize the pulses to guide their shapes to be similar for operations that are closely related. Once this set of reference pulses is calibrated, we can use a straightforward linear interpolation method to instantly obtain high-fidelity pulses for arbitrary gates in the continuous operation space. We demonstrate this procedure on the three-parameter Cartan decomposition of two-qubit gates to obtain control pulses for any arbitrary two-qubit gate (up to single-qubit operations) with consistently high fidelity. Compared to previous neural network approaches, the method is 7.7x more computationally efficient to calibrate the pulse space for the set of all single-qubit gates. Our technique generalizes to any number of gate parameters and could easily be used with advanced pulse optimization algorithms to allow for better translation from simulation to experiment.
Control synthesis for continuously-parameterized families of quantum gates can enable critical advantages for mid-sized quantum computing applications in advance of fault-tolerance. We combine quantum optimal control with physics-informed machine learning to efficiently synthesize control surfaces that interpolate among continuously-parameterized gate families. Using optimal control as an active learning strategy to guide pretraining, we bootstrap a physics-informed neural network to achieve rapid convergence to nonlinear control surfaces sufficient for our desired gates. We find our approach is critical for enabling an expressiveness beyond linear interpolation, which is important in cases of hard quantum control. We show in simulation that by adapting our pretraining to use a few reference pulse calibrations, we can apply transfer learning to quickly calibrate our learned control surfaces when devices fluctuate over time. We demonstrate synthesis for one and two qubit gates with one or two parameters, focusing on gate families for variational quantum algorithm (VQA) ansatz. By avoiding the inefficient decomposition of VQA ansatz into basis gate sets, continuous gate families are a potential method to improve the noise robustness of VQAs in the near term. Our framework shows how accessible optimal control tools can be combined with simple machine learning to enable practitioners to achieve 3x speedups for their algorithms by going beyond the standard gate sets.
Control synthesis for continuously-parameterized families of quantum gates can enable critical advantages for mid-sized quantum computing applications in advance of fault-tolerance. We combine quantum optimal control with physics-informed machine learning to efficiently synthesize control surfaces that interpolate among continuously-parameterized gate families. Using optimal control as an active learning strategy to guide pretraining, we bootstrap a physics-informed neural network to achieve rapid convergence to nonlinear control surfaces sufficient for our desired gates. We find our approach is critical for enabling an expressiveness beyond linear interpolation, which is important in cases of hard quantum control. We show in simulation that by adapting our pretraining to use a few reference pulse calibrations, we can apply transfer learning to quickly calibrate our learned control surfaces when devices fluctuate over time. We demonstrate synthesis for one and two qubit gates with one or two parameters, focusing on gate families for variational quantum algorithm (VQA) ansatz. By avoiding the inefficient decomposition of VQA ansatz into basis gate sets, continuous gate families are a potential method to improve the noise robustness of VQAs in the near term. Our framework shows how accessible optimal control tools can be combined with simple machine learning to enable practitioners to achieve 3x speedups for their algorithms by going beyond the standard gate sets.
We present a framework combining Lie group theory and feed-forward neural networks to efficiently generate quantum optimal control pulses for arbitrary unitary operations in superconducting qubit systems, bypassing the need for explicit optimization at inference time. The exponential scaling of the Hilbert space dimension with qubit number makes standard optimization approaches computationally prohibitive when large ensembles of distinct propagators must be processed, a bottleneck that is particularly acute in Trotterized quantum simulation. Our method addresses this limitation by pre-computing a representative set of control pulses via Lie group theory and training neural networks to map target propagators to their corresponding pulses. We demonstrate the approach on superconducting qubit systems of 2, 3, and 4 qubits, finding high reconstruction fidelity for specific combinations of Lie algebra parameters. As a physically motivated benchmark, we apply the methodology to reconstruct control pulses for the Trotter propagators of a neutrino system undergoing collective flavor oscillations. The successful generalization across system types demonstrates that a single model -- trained once on hardware-specific random propagators -- can serve as a universal control-pulse generator for any target quantum system of compatible Hilbert space dimension, offering a promising route toward scalable quantum simulation.
Abstract Optimal control techniques provide a means to tailor the control pulses required to generate customized quantum gates, which helps to improve the resilience of quantum simulations to gate errors and device noise. However, the significant amount of (classical) computation required to generate customized gates can quickly undermine the effectiveness of this approach, especially when pulse optimization needs to be iterated. We propose a method to reduce the computational time required to generate the control pulse for a Hamiltonian that is parametrically dependent on a time-varying quantity. We use simple interpolation schemes to accurately reconstruct the control pulses from a set of pulses obtained in advance for a discrete set of predetermined parameter values. We obtain a reconstruction with very high fidelity and a significant reduction in computational effort. We report the results of the application of the proposed method to device-level quantum simulations of the unitary (real) time evolution of two interacting neutrons based on superconducting qubits.
Parameterized gate circuits are used in many applications in the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era of quantum computing. These parameterized gates are mainly implemented using analytically found pulse protocols, often yielding suboptimal gate times, and consequently, fidelities. Alternatively, gate optimization algorithms are designed to construct high-fidelity pulses for individual fixed points in a continuous parameter space. Gates for intermediate parameters can subsequently be found by some form of interpolation between previously constructed pulses. Nevertheless, it is not guaranteed (as with analytic protocols) that the pulses found by the optimization algorithms belong to the same family of solutions and thus resemble each other. Interpolation of two pulses from different solution families often leads to high infidelities, as the pulse strays away from the minimum in the parameter/fidelity landscape. This work introduces a spectral clustering method to sort high-fidelity, optimized pulses in families and interpolate solely between pulses of the same family. Accordingly, interpolations will always approach maximal fidelity. Furthermore, as more than one pulse family is constructed, the parameter space can be partitioned, and according to this partition, a family prevails fidelity-wise. This work provides a meticulous demonstration of our constitutive continuous gate family construction by applying it to a universal gate set for Rydberg and Cat qubits under noise.
Real-time adaptive control of quantum systems requires rapid generation of robust, high-fidelity pulses across a continuous range of operating conditions. Standard optimization algorithms such as gradient-ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) solve each instance independently, discarding information between runs and requiring costly reinitialization when parameters change. We present an approach to robust optimal quantum control based on model-based reinforcement learning, in which a single neural network -- embedding the Hamiltonian directly into the training pipeline -- generates robust gates across an entire family of gate configurations, without pre-computed training data. Demonstrated on a single-spin (two-level) system, the trained networks produce pulses for arbitrary rotation angles over a range of pulse durations, detunings, and field inhomogeneities in milliseconds, at fidelities comparable to multi-seed GRAPE. The framework is inherently adaptable: any parameter entering the Hamiltonian can serve as a network input, extending the approach to different systems and control settings. Beyond speed, the network reveals structure in the control landscape: it discovers the same structured phase profiles that appear in GRAPE solutions -- made identifiable through fidelity-invariant symmetry transformations -- but more consistently than independent optimization. This consistency enables smooth interpolation across the entire trained parameter space.