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arXiv:2504.17303 · IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

Enhancing the Controllability of Quantum Systems via a Static Field

Ruikang Liang, Eugenio Pozzoli, M. Leibscher, Mario Sigalotti, Christiane P. Koch, Ugo Boscain

Published May 18, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We provide a sufficient condition for the controllability of a bilinear closed quantum system steered by a static field and a time-varying field, based on the notion of weakly conically connected spectrum. More precisely, we show that if a controlled Hamiltonian with two inputs has a weakly conically connected spectrum, then, freezing one of the two inputs at almost every constant value, the obtained single-input system is controllable. The result is illustrated with two examples, enantio-selective excitation in a chiral molecule and the driven Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian.

DOI
10.1109/tac.2026.3694611

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We provide a sufficient condition for the controllability of a bilinear closed quantum system steered by a static field and a time-varying field, based on the notion of weakly conically connected spectrum. More precisely, we show that if a controlled Hamiltonian with two inputs has a weakly conically connected spectrum, then, freezing one of the two inputs at almost every constant value, the obtained single-input system is controllable. The result is illustrated with two examples, enantio-selective excitation in a chiral molecule and the driven Jaynes–Cummings Hamiltonian.
Abstract. We explore the controllability of a closed multi-input control-affine quantum system. Previous studies have demonstrated that a spectrum connected by conical intersections which do not pile up yields exact controllability in finite dimension and approximate controllability in infinite dimension. Actually, the property that intersections between eigenvalues are conical and that they do not pile up is generic. However, in physical situations, due to symmetry of the system, the spectrum can exhibit intersections that are not conical and possibly pile up. We extend the controllability result to cover these types of situations under the hypothesis that the intersections have at least one conical direction and the piled-up intersections have “rationally unrelated germs.” Finally, we provide a testable first-order sufficient condition for controllability. Physically relevant examples are provided.
We investigate the controllability of quantum systems in two different settings: the standard "closed" setting, in which a quantum system is seen as isolated and the control problem is formulated on the Schrödinger equation; the open setting that describes a quantum system in interaction with a larger one, of which just qualitative parameters are known, by means of the Lindblad equation on states. In the context of closed systems we focus our attention to an interesting class of models, namely the spin-boson models. The latter describe the interaction between a 2-level quantum system and finitely many distinguished modes of a bosonic field. We discuss two prototypical examples, the Rabi model and the Jaynes-Cummings model, which despite their age are still very popular in several fields of quantum physics. Notably, in the context of cavity Quantum Electro Dynamics (C-QED) they provide an approximate yet accurate description of the dynamics of a 2-level atom in a resonant microwave cavity, as in recent experiments of S. Haroche. We investigate the controllability properties of these models, analyzing two different types of control operators acting on the bosonic part, corresponding -in the application to cavity QED- to an external electric and magnetic field, respectively. We review some recent results and prove the approximate controllability of the Jaynes-Cummings model with these controls. This result is based on a spectral analysis exploiting the non-resonances of the spectrum. As far as the relation between the Rabi and the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonians concerns, we treat the so called rotating wave approximation in a rigorous framework. We formulate the problem as an adiabatic limit in which the detuning frequency and the interaction strength parameter goes to zero, known as the weak-coupling regime. We prove that, under certain hypothesis on the ratio between the detuning and the coupling, the Jaynes-Cumming and the Rabi dynamics exhibit the same behaviour, more precisely the evolution operators they generate are close in norm. In the framework of open quantum systems we investigate the controllability of the Lindblad equation. We consider a control acting adiabatically on the internal part of the system, which we see as a degree of freedom that can be used to contrast the action of the environment. The adiabatic action of the control is chosen to produce a robust transition. We prove, in the prototype case of a two-level system, that the system approach a set of equilibrium points determined by the environment, i.e. the parameters that specify the Lindblad operator. On that set the system can be adiabatically steered choosing a suitable control. The analysis is based on the application of geometrical singular perturbation methods.
The main purpose of the thesis is to study the links between the singularities of the spectrum of a controlled quantum Hamiltonian and the controllability issues of the associated Schr"odinger equation.The principal issue that is developed is how to control a parameter-dependent family of quantum systems with a common control input. This problem of ensemble controllability is linked to the design of a robust control strategy when a parameter (a resonance frequency or a control field inhomogeneity for instance) is unknown, and is an important issue for experimentalists.Thanks to the study one-parametric families of Hamiltonians and their generic singularities, we give an explicit control strategy for the ensemble controllability problem when geometric conditions on the spectrum of the Hamiltonian are satisfied. The result is based on adiabatic approximation theory and on the presence of curves of conical eigenvalue intersections of the controlled Hamiltonian. The proposed technique works for systems evolving both in finite-dimensional and infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Then we study the problem of ensemble controllability under less restrictive hypotheses on the spectrum, namely the presence of non-conical singularities. Under generic conditions such non-conical singularities are not present for single systems, but appear for one-parametric families of systems.For the study of a single system, we focus on a class of curves in the space of controls, called the non-mixing curves (defined in cite{Bos}), that can optimize the adiabatic dynamics near conical and non-conical intersections. They are linked to the geometry of the eigenspaces of the controlled Hamiltonian and the adiabatic approximation holds with higher precision along them.We propose to study the compatibility of the adiabatic approximation with the rotating wave approximation. Such approximations are usually done in cascade by physicists. My work shows that this is justified for finite dimensional quantum systems only under certain conditions on the time scales. We also study ensemble control issues in this case.
In quantum control theory, the fundamental issue of controllability covers the questions whether and under which conditions a system can be steered from one pure state into another by suitably tuned time evolution operators. Even though Lie theoretic methods to analyze these aspects are well-established for finite dimensional systems, they fail to apply to those with an infinite number of levels. The Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model - describing two-level systems in coupled cavities - is such an infinite dimensional system. In this contribution we study its controllability. In the two cavity case we exploit symmetry arguments; we show that one part of the control Hamiltonians can be studied in terms of infinite dimensional block diagonal Lie algebras while the other part breaks this symmetry to achieve controllability. An induction on the number of cavities extends this result to the general case. Individual control of the qubit and collective control of the hopping between cavities is sufficient for both pure state and strong operator controllability. We additionally establish new criteria for the controllability of infinite dimensional quantum systems admitting symmetries.
In this paper we consider the problem of inducing a transition in a controlled quantum mechanical system whose spectrum loses simplicity for some values of the control. We study the situation in which the Hamiltonian of the system is real, and we are in presence of two controls. In this case, eigenvalue crossings are generically conical. Adiabatic approximation is used to decouple a finite dimensional sub system from the original one (usually infinite dimensional). The main advantage of this method is that as a byproduct of the controllability result it permits to get an explicit expression of the controls. Moreover it may be used in the case in which the dependence of the Hamiltonian from the controls is non-linear, for which at the moment, no other method works. In this paper we study the basic block of this controllability method, that is a two by two system whose spectrum presents a conical intersection. We show how to control exactly this system with a control strategy that can be slowed down. The possibility of slowing down the control law is essential to obtain an adiabatic decoupling from the rest of the system with an arbitrary precision.