Coherent quantum LQG control

Based on a recently developed notion of physical realizability for quantum linear stochastic systems, we formulate a quantum LQG optimal control problem for quantum linear stochastic systems where the controller itself may also be a quantum system and the plant output signal can be fully quantum. Such a control scheme is often referred to in the quantum control literature as "coherent feedback control.'' It distinguishes the present work from previous works on the quantum LQG problem where measurement is performed on the plant and the measurement signals are used as input to a fully classical controller with no quantum degrees of freedom. The difference in our formulation is the presence of additional non-linear and linear constraints on the coefficients of the sought after controller, rendering the problem as a type of constrained controller design problem. Due to the presence of these constraints our problem is inherently computationally hard and this also distinguishes it in an important way from the standard LQG problem. We propose a numerical procedure for solving this problem based on an alternating projections algorithm and, as initial demonstration of the feasibility of this approach, we provide fully quantum controller design examples in which numerical solutions to the problem were successfully obtained. For comparison, we also consider the case of classical linear controllers that use direct or indirect measurements, and show that there exists a fully quantum linear controller which offers an improvement in performance over the classical ones.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure, revised and corrected version (mainly to Section 8). To be published in Automatica, Journal of IFAC, 200

Notes on Coherent Feedback Control for Linear Quantum Systems

This paper considers some formulations and possible approaches to the coherent LQG and $H^\infty$ quantum control problems. Some new results for these problems are presented in the case of annihilation operator only quantum systems showing that in this case, the optimal controllers are trivial controllers.Comment: A preliminary version is to appear in the proceedings of the 2013 Australian Control COnferenc

Direct and Indirect Couplings in Coherent Feedback Control of Linear Quantum Systems

The purpose of this paper is to study and design direct and indirect couplings for use in coherent feedback control of a class of linear quantum stochastic systems. A general physical model for a nominal linear quantum system coupled directly and indirectly to external systems is presented. Fundamental properties of stability, dissipation, passivity, and gain for this class of linear quantum models are presented and characterized using complex Lyapunov equations and linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Coherent $H^\infty$ and LQG synthesis methods are extended to accommodate direct couplings using multistep optimization. Examples are given to illustrate the results.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, October 201

Coherent Quantum Filtering for Physically Realizable Linear Quantum Plants

The paper is concerned with a problem of coherent (measurement-free) filtering for physically realizable (PR) linear quantum plants. The state variables of such systems satisfy canonical commutation relations and are governed by linear quantum stochastic differential equations, dynamically equivalent to those of an open quantum harmonic oscillator. The problem is to design another PR quantum system, connected unilaterally to the output of the plant and playing the role of a quantum filter, so as to minimize a mean square discrepancy between the dynamic variables of the plant and the output of the filter. This coherent quantum filtering (CQF) formulation is a simplified feedback-free version of the coherent quantum LQG control problem which remains open despite recent studies. The CQF problem is transformed into a constrained covariance control problem which is treated by using the Frechet differentiation of an appropriate Lagrange function with respect to the matrices of the filter.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, submitted to ECC 201