The emerging discipline of coherent-feedback quantum control provides core concepts and methods for nanopho- tonic circuit theory, which can be assimilated within modern approaches to computer-aided design. Current research in this area includes the development of software tools to enable a schematic capture workflow for compilation and analysis of quantum stochastic models for nanophotonic circuits, exploration of elementary coherent-feedback circuit motifs, and laboratory demonstrations of quantum nonlinear photonic devices.
The emerging discipline of coherent-feedback quantum control provides core concepts and methods for nanopho- tonic circuit theory, which can be assimilated within modern approaches to computer-aided design. Current research in this area includes the development of software tools to enable a schematic capture workflow for compilation and analysis of quantum stochastic models for nanophotonic circuits, exploration of elementary coherent-feedback circuit motifs, and laboratory demonstrations of quantum nonlinear photonic devices.
Abstract : During the three-year performance period we have carried out a program of theoretical research on the foundations and potential applications of coherent-feedback quantum control. We have focused on potential applications in quantum-enhanced meterology and information processing, and on hardware platforms of an optical or opto-mechanical nature. The studies we have been performing begin to build a picture of how coherent feedback can provide a kind of circuit/network theory for quantum engineering, enabling rigorous analysis and numerical simulation of advanced devices and systems. We have begun to establish analytical approaches for comparing the performance of quantum-enhanced feedback control systems with classical counterparts, leveraging canonical results from classical control theory together with advanced methods for numerical simulations of proposed quantum systems. All of our results point to the interest of continued future study in this area, and of future investments in the experimental realization of the kinds of systems we propose.
The emergence of coherent quantum feedback control (CQFC) as a new paradigm for precise manipulation of dynamics of complex quantum systems has led to the development of efficient theoretical modeling and simulation tools and opened avenues for new practical implementations. This work explores the applicability of the integrated silicon photonics platform for implementing scalable CQFC networks. If proven successful, on-chip implementations of these networks would provide scalable and efficient nanophotonic components for autonomous quantum information processing devices and ultra-low-power optical processing systems at telecommunications wavelengths. We analyze the strengths of the silicon photonics platform for CQFC applications and identify the key challenges to both the theoretical formalism and experimental implementations. In particular, we determine specific extensions to the theoretical CQFC framework (which was originally developed with bulk-optics implementations in mind), required to make it fully applicable to modeling of linear and nonlinear integrated optics networks. We also report the results of a preliminary experiment that studied the performance of an in situ controllable silicon nanophotonic network of two coupled cavities and analyze the properties of this device using the CQFC formalism.
In this paper, an overview of research in quantum control is presented. Examples of work in the first theme include numerous applications of semi-definite programming and relaxation methods in quantum information theory. Examples of the second include applications of feedback control in the development of new receiver designs for quantum-optical telecom. The third theme is just beginning to emerge as an active research area, linking fundamental issues in quantum field theory with new challenges for applied and computational mathematics in non-commutative stochastic analysis and optimization.
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.
Modern quantum nanophotonics is revealed as the unique synergy between the quantum world and nanophotonics providing us with novel ways of controlling the quantum states of light, and enabling novel routes towards the realisation of future generation’s quantum information processing (QIP) systems. Focusing on the quantum photon-matter interaction, nano-confined light, nano-optical quantum interference and the control of linear and nonlinear quantum phenomena at the nanoscale in terms of the quantum superposition and entanglement, we provide a fundamental description of nano-photonic quantum systems. In particular, deep discussions on the outstanding characteristics of nano-structured photonic circuits are essential to understand the strong light-matter coupling, capable of boosting the coherence times and the processing efficiency of qubits, i.e., the basic building blocks of quantum computing. Furthermore, a progressive approach dealing with the QIP functionalities within concepts of quantum communication networks and powerful quantum computational architectures is provided, motivating an empirical hunt for efficient QIP approaches. Positive perspectives are given on the potential implications of modern quantum nanophotonics to the theoretical frameworks of the field.
In the control of classical mechanical systems, feedback has been applied to the generation of desired nonlinear dynamics, e.g., in chaos control. However, how much this can be done is still an open problem in quantum mechanical systems. This paper presents a scheme of enhancing nonlinear quantum effects via the recently developed coherent feedback techniques, which can be shown to outperform the measurement-based quantum feedback scheme that can only generate pseudo-nonlinear quantum effects. Apart from the advantages of our method, an unsolved problem is that the decoherence rate is also increased by the quantum amplifier, which may be solved by introducing, e.g., an integral device or an nonlinear quantum amplifier. Such a proposal is demonstrated via two application examples in quantum optics on chip. In the first example, we show that nonlinear Kerr effect can be generated and amplified to be comparable with the linear effect in a transmission line resonator (TLR). In the second example, we show that by tuning the gains of the quantum amplifiers in a TLR coherent feedback network, the resulting nonlinear effects can generate and manipulate non-Gaussian “light” (microwave field) which exhibits fully quantum sub-Poisson photoncount statistics and photon antibunching phenomenon. The scheme opens up broad applications in engineering nonlinear quantum optics on chip. Particularly, in this study, the concept of feedback nonlinearization which is very useful for quantum feedback control systems is introduced. This is in contrast to the feedback linearization concept used in classical nonlinear feedback control systems.