All physical quantum systems are in contact with the external world which is inevitably a source of noise. It is therefore necessary to take into account this dissipation when designing controls that accomplish useful tasks in quantum information processing. This thesis is on that overlap of open quantum systems and control theory; it looks at what dynamics can happen with the use of external driving, and how this driving can be chosen to accomplish a desired goal. The first result looks at how a given quantum dissipator can be manipulated, using coherent controls, into replicating the action of a different type of noise. This results in no-go theorems for how noise can be transformed based on its isotropy, with applications in simulating open systems. Another way of doing simulations is to use only unitary dynamics over the system and a finite dimensional ancilla, and it is proved that there always exists a dilation Hamiltonian that replicates the noisy dynamics continuously in time. This also highlights the fact that adding controls on noise can result in a different evolution than if the controls were done on the under- lying system-environment level. A conjecture is introduced and studied which states that both approaches are equivalent in the special case of the controls commuting with the Lindbladian. A way around this difficulty is to use a quantum system to compute in situ which controls are best for achieving a desired task on itself. This problem is studied in the context of reaching entangling gates on a quantum simulator in order to upgrade it into a quantum computer. The experimental cost of doing so is found to be polynomial in the number of qubits in simulations. The same underlying principle is also used to find error correcting codes tailored to the dissipation in a system.
All physical quantum systems are in contact with the external world which is inevitably a source of noise. It is therefore necessary to take into account this dissipation when designing controls that accomplish useful tasks in quantum information processing. This thesis is on that overlap of open quantum systems and control theory; it looks at what dynamics can happen with the use of external driving, and how this driving can be chosen to accomplish a desired goal. The first result looks at how a given quantum dissipator can be manipulated, using coherent controls, into replicating the action of a different type of noise. This results in no-go theorems for how noise can be transformed based on its isotropy, with applications in simulating open systems. Another way of doing simulations is to use only unitary dynamics over the system and a finite dimensional ancilla, and it is proved that there always exists a dilation Hamiltonian that replicates the noisy dynamics continuously in time. This also highlights the fact that adding controls on noise can result in a different evolution than if the controls were done on the under- lying system-environment level. A conjecture is introduced and studied which states that both approaches are equivalent in the special case of the controls commuting with the Lindbladian. A way around this difficulty is to use a quantum system to compute in situ which controls are best for achieving a desired task on itself. This problem is studied in the context of reaching entangling gates on a quantum simulator in order to upgrade it into a quantum computer. The experimental cost of doing so is found to be polynomial in the number of qubits in simulations. The same underlying principle is also used to find error correcting codes tailored to the dissipation in a system.
Known as decoherence, the unavoidable interaction of a quantum system with its surrounding environment is usually considered to be detrimental for quantum information processing. In this thesis the coherent, open loop control of such open systems is studied. Concepts from quantum control theory and the theory of open quantum system are adopted in order to fight decoherence and implement quantum gates in a noiseless manner. In particular, Lie algebraic methods and numerical optimization tools are used to investigate the control properties of a single spin interacting with a spin environment. We show that, independent of the size of the environment, every unitary transformation can be implemented on the system spin through a single control field. We proceed by investigating dynamical decoupling, a method to suppress the interactions with the environment, for finite- and for in- finite dimensional systems. We prove that every finite dimensional system can be protected from decoherence, even if the environment is infinite dimensional, whereas for noise described by a Lindblad master equation dynamical decoupling will never succeed. This will lead to a new method to distinguish decoherence from intrinsic noise terms. We further prove that not every infinite dimensional system can be protected from decoherence through dynamical decoupling. Afterwards we investigate dynamical decoupling of systems that are described by quadratic Hamiltonians, showing that such interactions can always be suppressed with two simple operations. In the last part we investigate the coherent control of a Lindblad master equation. We show that a strong noise process exhibiting a decoherence free subspace can substantially increase the number of unitary operations that can be implemented, allowing us to fully control parts of the system. Afterwards we develop a scheme to make Hamiltonians and Lindbladians commutative by adding an auxiliary system. The old, possibly non-commutative dynamics, is recovered through a non-selective measurement.
We apply the Krotov method for open and closed quantum systems with the objective of finding optimized controls to manipulate qubit/qutrit systems in the presence of the external environment. In the case of unitary optimization, the Krotov method is first applied to a quantum system neglecting its interaction with the environment. The resulting controls from the unitary optimization are then used to drive the system along with the environmental noise. In the case of non-unitary optimization, the Krotov method already takes into account the noise during the optimization process. We consider two distinct computational task: target-state preparation and quantum gate implementation. These tasks are carried out in simple qubit/qutrit systems and also in systems presenting leakage states. For the state-preparation cases, the controls from the non-unitary optimization outperform the controls from the unitary optimization. However, as we show here, this is not always true for the implementation of quantum gates. There are some situations where the unitary optimization performs equally well compared to the non-unitary optimization. We verify that these situations corresponds to either the absence of leakage states or to the effects of dissipation being spread uniformly over the system, including non-computational levels. For such cases, the quantum gate implementation must cover the entire Hilbert space and there is no way to dodge dissipation. On the other hand, if the subspace containing the computational levels and its complement are differently affected by dissipation, the non-unitary optimization becomes effective.
Abstract We apply the Krotov method (KM) for open and closed quantum systems to find optimized controls to manipulate qubit/qutrit systems in the presence of the external environment. In the case of unitary optimization, the KM is first applied to a quantum system neglecting its interaction with the environment. The resulting controls from the unitary optimization are then used to drive the system along with the environmental noise. In the case of non-unitary optimization, the KM already takes into account the noise during the optimization process. We consider two distinct computational tasks: target-state preparation and quantum gate implementation. These tasks are carried out in simple qubit/qutrit systems and also in systems presenting leakage states. For the state preparation cases, the controls from the non-unitary optimization outperform the controls from the unitary optimization. However, as we show here, this is not always true for the implementation of quantum gates. There are some situations where the unitary optimization performs equally well compared to the non-unitary optimization. We verify that these situations correspond to either the absence of leakage states or to the effects of dissipation being spread uniformly over the system, including non-computational levels. For such cases, the quantum gate implementation must cover the entire Hilbert space and there is no way to dodge dissipation. On the other hand, if the subspace containing the computational levels and its complement are differently affected by dissipation, the non-unitary optimization becomes effective.
Control of open quantum systems is essential for the realization of contemporary quantum science and technology. We demonstrate such control using a thermodynamically consistent framework, taking into account the fact that the drive can modify the system's interaction with the environment. Such an effect is incorporated within the dynamical equation, leading to control-dependent dissipation. This relation serves as the key element for open-system control. The control paradigm is displayed by analyzing entropy-changing state-to-state transformations, such as heating and cooling. The difficult task of controlling quantum gates is achieved for nonunitary reset maps with complete memory loss. In addition, we identify a mechanism for controlling unitary gates by actively removing entropy from the system to the environment. We demonstrate a universal set of single- and double-qubit unitary gates under dissipation.
Since no physical system can ever be completely isolated from its environment, the study of open quantum systems is pivotal to reliably and accurately control complex quantum systems. In practice, reliability of the control field needs to be confirmed via certification of the target evolution while accuracy requires the derivation of high-fidelity control schemes in the presence of decoherence. In the first part of this thesis an algebraic framework is presented that allows to determine the minimal requirements on the unique characterisation of arbitrary unitary gates in open quantum systems, independent on the particular physical implementation of the employed quantum device. To this end, a set of theorems is devised that can be used to assess whether a given set of input states on a quantum channel is sufficient to judge whether a desired unitary gate is realised. This allows to determine the minimal input for such a task, which proves to be, quite remarkably, independent of system size. These results allow to elucidate the fundamental limits regarding certification and tomography of open quantum systems. The combination of these insights with state-of-the-art Monte Carlo process certification techniques permits a significant improvement of the scaling when certifying arbitrary unitary gates. This improvement is not only restricted to quantum information devices where the basic information carrier is the qubit but it also extends to systems where the fundamental informational entities can be of arbitary dimensionality, the so-called qudits. The second part of this thesis concerns the impact of these findings from the point of view of Optimal Control Theory (OCT). OCT for quantum systems utilises concepts from engineering such as feedback and optimisation to engineer constructive and destructive interferences in order to steer a physical process in a desired direction. It turns out that the aforementioned mathematical findings allow to deduce novel optimisation functionals that significantly reduce not only the required memory for numerical control algorithms but also the total CPU time required to obtain a certain fidelity for the optimised process. The thesis concludes by discussing two problems of fundamental interest in quantum information processing from the point of view of optimal control the preparation of pure states and the implementation of unitary gates in open quantum systems. For both cases specific physical examples are considered: for the former the vibrational cooling of molecules via optical pumping and for the latter a superconducting phase qudit implementation. In particular, it is illustrated how features of the environment can be exploited to reach the desired targets.
Control of open quantum systems is an essential ingredient to the realization of contemporary quantum science and technology. We demonstrate such control by employing a thermodynamically consistent framework, taking into account the fact that the drive can modify the interaction with environment. Such an effect is incorporated within the dynamical equation, leading to control dependent dissipation, this relation serves as the key element for open system control. Thermodynamics of the control process is reflected by a unidirectional flow of energy to the environment resulting in large entropy production. The control paradigm is displayed by analyzing entropy changing state to state transformations, such as heating and cooling. In addition, the generation of quantum gates under dissipative conditions is demonstrated for both non-unitary reset maps with complete memory loss and a universal set of single and double qubit unitary gates.