16,090 research outputs found
Noise spectroscopy of a quantum-classical environment with a diamond qubit
Knowing a quantum system's environment is critical for its practical use as a
quantum device. Qubit sensors can reconstruct the noise spectral density of a
classical bath, provided long enough coherence time. Here we present a protocol
that can unravel the characteristics of a more complex environment, comprising
both unknown coherently coupled quantum systems, and a larger quantum bath that
can be modeled as a classical stochastic field. We exploit the rich environment
of a Nitrogen-Vacancy center in diamond, tuning the environment behavior with a
bias magnetic field, to experimentally demonstrate our method. We show how to
reconstruct the noise spectral density even when limited by relatively short
coherence times, and identify the local spin environment. Importantly, we
demonstrate that the reconstructed model can have predictive power, describing
the spin qubit dynamics under control sequences not used for noise
spectroscopy, a feature critical for building robust quantum devices. At lower
bias fields, where the effects of the quantum nature of the bath are more
pronounced, we find that more than a single classical noise model are needed to
properly describe the spin coherence under different controls, due to the back
action of the qubit onto the bath.Comment: Main text: 5 pages, 5 figures. Supplemental material: 7 pages, 7
figures, 4 table
Data-Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Probabilistic Model Predictive Control
Trial-and-error based reinforcement learning (RL) has seen rapid advancements
in recent times, especially with the advent of deep neural networks. However,
the majority of autonomous RL algorithms require a large number of interactions
with the environment. A large number of interactions may be impractical in many
real-world applications, such as robotics, and many practical systems have to
obey limitations in the form of state space or control constraints. To reduce
the number of system interactions while simultaneously handling constraints, we
propose a model-based RL framework based on probabilistic Model Predictive
Control (MPC). In particular, we propose to learn a probabilistic transition
model using Gaussian Processes (GPs) to incorporate model uncertainty into
long-term predictions, thereby, reducing the impact of model errors. We then
use MPC to find a control sequence that minimises the expected long-term cost.
We provide theoretical guarantees for first-order optimality in the GP-based
transition models with deterministic approximate inference for long-term
planning. We demonstrate that our approach does not only achieve
state-of-the-art data efficiency, but also is a principled way for RL in
constrained environments.Comment: Accepted at AISTATS 2018
- …