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arXiv:2408.11989 · Physical Review Research

Controlling nonergodicity in quantum many-body systems by reinforcement learning

Lili Ye, Ying‐Cheng Lai

Published Mar 10, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Finding optimal control strategies to suppress quantum thermalization for arbitrarily initial states, the so-called quantum nonergodicity control, is important for quantum information science and technologies. Previous control methods relied largely on theoretical model of the target quantum system, but invertible model approximations and inaccuracies can lead to control failures. We develop a model-free and deep reinforcement-learning (DRL) framework for quantum nonergodicity control. It is a machine-learning method with the unique focus on balancing exploration and exploitation strategies to maximize the cumulative rewards so as to preserve the initial memory in the time-dependent nonergodic metrics over a long stretch of time. We use the paradigmatic one-dimensional tilted Fermi-Hubbard system to demonstrate that the DRL agent can efficiently learn the quantum many-body system solely through the interactions with the environment. The optimal policy obtained by the DRL provides broader control scenarios for managing nonergodicity in the phase diagram as compared to, e.g., the specific protocol for Wannier-Stark localization. The continuous control protocols and observations are experimentally feasible. The model-free nature of DRL and its versatile search space for control functions render promising nonergodicity control in more complex quantum many-body systems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.7.013256

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The fast and efficient preparation of quantum critical states is a challenging yet crucial task for various quantum technologies. This difficulty is most particularly for systems near a quantum phase transition, where the closure of the energy gap fundamentally limits the timescale of adiabatic processes and thus precludes rapid state preparation. We propose a framework using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to rapidly prepare quantum critical states, with broad extendibility to light-matter interaction systems. Specifically, a DRL agent optimizes a set of time-dependent control Hamiltonians to drive the system from an initial noncritical state to a target critical state within a finite time and over experimentally accessible parameter ranges. As a concrete application, we focus on the quantum Rabi model. The DRL-optimized time-dependent control Hamiltonian yields a final state with high fidelity ( > 0.999 ) to the target critical state. The protocol can be readily extended to other quantum critical systems described by light-matter interaction models, such as quantum Dicke model. This investigation provides a powerful framework for preparing and manipulating quantum critical states.
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has gained increasing attention in quantum physics, especially for quantum control problems, as it effectively handles high dimensionality and complex dynamics. However, many existing DRL-based quantum control methods assume full observability of quantum states, which tends to be impractical due to the massive state copies required for precise quantum measurements. To address this, we model quantum control under partial observations and introduce a memory-based DRL (MDRL) method that efficiently handles such scenarios. The proposed MDRL comprises two key components: a memory-based exploration strategy and a memory-based reward scheme. Specifically, the agent is equipped with a biology-inspired brain to memorize information derived from partial observations, including whether an episode is successful and the number of steps spent on a successful episode. The exploration strategy leverages the memorized information to guide interactions with the quantum system, while the reward scheme assigns appropriate rewards, together enabling the agent to learn an effective control strategy. The effectiveness of MDRL is verified by three examples, i.e., one-qubit state control, two-qubit state control, andTxT_{x}Tx​gate design. Numerical results demonstrate that MDRL outperforms several representative DRL algorithms for quantum control.
Manipulate and control of the complex quantum system with high precision are essential for achieving universal fault tolerant quantum computing. For a physical system with restricted control resources, it is a challenge to control the dynamics of the target system efficiently and precisely under disturbances. Here we propose a high dimensional quantum control framework and show that deep reinforcement learning provides an efficient way to identify the optimal strategies with restricted control parameters of the complex quantum system. This framework can be generalized to be applied to other quantum control models. Compared with the traditional optimal control method, this deep reinforcement learning algorithm can realize efficient and precise control for high dimensional quantum systems with different types of disturbances.
The stabilization of quantum states is a fundamental problem for realizing various quantum technologies. Measurement-based-feedback strategies have demonstrated powerful performance, and the construction of quantum control signals using measurement information has attracted great interest. However, the interaction between quantum systems and the environment is inevitable, especially when measurements are introduced, which leads to decoherence. To mitigate decoherence, it is desirable to stabilize quantum systems faster, thereby reducing the time of interaction with the environment. In this paper, we utilize information obtained from measurement and apply deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms, without explicitly constructing specific complex measurement-control mappings, to rapidly drive random initial quantum state to the target state. The proposed DRL algorithm has the ability to speed up the convergence to a target state, which shortens the interaction between quantum systems and their environments to protect coherence. Simulations are performed on two-qubit and three-qubit systems, and the results show that our algorithm can successfully stabilize random initial quantum system to the target entangled state, with a convergence time faster than traditional methods such as Lyapunov feedback control and several DRL algorithms with different reward functions. Moreover, it exhibits robustness against imperfect measurements and delays in system evolution.
Entanglement is fundamental to quantum information science and technology, yet controlling and manipulating entanglement—so-called entanglement engineering—for arbitrary quantum systems remains a formidable challenge. There are two difficulties: the fragility of quantum entanglement and its experimental characterization. We develop a model-free deep reinforcement-learning (RL) approach to entanglement engineering, in which feedback control together with weak continuous measurement and partial state observation is exploited to generate and maintain desired entanglement. We employ quantum optomechanical systems with linear or nonlinear photon–phonon interactions to demonstrate the workings of our machine-learning-based entanglement engineering protocol. In particular, the RL agent sequentially interacts with one or multiple parallel quantum optomechanical environments, collects trajectories, and updates the policy to maximize the accumulated reward to create and stabilize quantum entanglement over an arbitrary amount of time. The machine-learning-based model-free control principle is applicable to the entanglement engineering of experimental quantum systems in general.