Ground-state Stabilization of Open Quantum Systems by Dissipation

Control by dissipation, or environment engineering, constitutes an important methodology within quantum coherent control which was proposed to improve the robustness and scalability of quantum control systems. The system-environment coupling, often considered to be detrimental to quantum coherence, also provides the means to steer the system to desired states. This paper aims to develop the theory for engineering of the dissipation, based on a ground-state Lyapunov stability analysis of open quantum systems via a Heisenberg-picture approach. Algebraic conditions concerning the ground-state stability and scalability of quantum systems are obtained. In particular, Lyapunov stability conditions expressed as operator inequalities allow a purely algebraic treatment of the environment engineering problem, which facilitates the integration of quantum components into a large-scale quantum system and draws an explicit connection to the classical theory of vector Lyapunov functions and decomposition-aggregation methods for control of complex systems. The implications of the results in relation to dissipative quantum computing and state engineering are also discussed in this paper.Comment: 18 pages, to appear in Automatic

Quantum Linear Systems Theory

This paper surveys some recent results on the theory of quantum linear systems and presents them within a unified framework. Quantum linear systems are a class of systems whose dynamics, which are described by the laws of quantum mechanics, take the specific form of a set of linear quantum stochastic differential equations (QSDEs). Such systems commonly arise in the area of quantum optics and related disciplines. Systems whose dynamics can be described or approximated by linear QSDEs include interconnections of optical cavities, beam-splitters, phase-shifters, optical parametric amplifiers, optical squeezers, and cavity quantum electrodynamic systems. With advances in quantum technology, the feedback control of such quantum systems is generating new challenges in the field of control theory. Potential applications of such quantum feedback control systems include quantum computing, quantum error correction, quantum communications, gravity wave detection, metrology, atom lasers, and superconducting quantum circuits. A recently emerging approach to the feedback control of quantum linear systems involves the use of a controller which itself is a quantum linear system. This approach to quantum feedback control, referred to as coherent quantum feedback control, has the advantage that it does not destroy quantum information, is fast, and has the potential for efficient implementation. However, the design of coherent quantum feedback controllers remains a major challenge. This paper discusses recent results concerning the synthesis of H-infinity optimal controllers for linear quantum systems in the coherent control case. An important issue which arises both in the modelling of linear quantum systems and in the synthesis of linear coherent quantum controllers is the issue of physical realizability. This issue relates to the property of whether a given set of QSDEs corresponds to a physical quantum system satisfying the laws of quantum mechanics. The paper will cover recent results relating the question of physical realizability to notions occurring in linear systems theory such as lossless bounded real systems and dual J-J unitary systems.Research supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC)