Symmetrizing quantum dynamics beyond gossip-type algorithms

Recently, consensus-type problems have been formulated in the quantum domain. Obtaining average quantum consensus consists in the dynamical symmetrization of a multipartite quantum system while preserving the expectation of a given global observable. In this paper, two improved ways of obtaining consensus via dissipative engineering are introduced, which employ on quasi local preparation of mixtures of symmetric pure states, and show better performance in terms of purity dynamics with respect to existing algorithms. In addition, the first method can be used in combination with simple control resources in order to engineer pure Dicke states, while the second method guarantees a stronger type of consensus, namely single-measurement consensus. This implies that outcomes of local measurements on different subsystems are perfectly correlated when consensus is achieved. Both dynamics can be randomized and are suitable for feedback implementation.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Quantum and classical resources for unitary design of open-system evolutions

A variety of tasks in quantum control, ranging from purification and cooling to quantum stabilisation and open-system simulation, rely on the ability to implement a target quantum channel over a specified time interval within prescribed accuracy. This can be achieved by engineering a suitable unitary dynamics of the system of interest along with its environment, which, depending on the available level of control, is fully or partly exploited as a coherent quantum controller. After formalising a controllability framework for completely positive trace-preserving quantum dynamics, we provide sufficient conditions on the environment state and dimension that allow for the realisation of relevant classes of quantum channels, including extreme channels, stochastic unitaries or simply any channel. The results hinge on generalisations of Stinespring's dilation via a subsystem principle. In the process, we show that a conjecture by Lloyd on the minimal dimension of the environment required for arbitrary open-system simulation, albeit formally disproved, can in fact be salvaged, provided that classical randomisation is included among the available resources. Existing measurement-based feedback protocols for universal simulation, dynamical decoupling and dissipative state preparation are recast within the proposed coherent framework as concrete applications, and the resources they employ discussed in the light of the general results

Decompositions of Hilbert Spaces, Stability Analysis and Convergence Probabilities for Discrete-Time Quantum Dynamical Semigroups

We investigate convergence properties of discrete-time semigroup quantum dynamics, including asymptotic stability, probability and speed of convergence to pure states and subspaces. These properties are of interest in both the analysis of uncontrolled evolutions and the engineering of controlled dynamics for quantum information processing. Our results include two Hilbert space decompositions that allow for deciding the stability of the subspace of interest and for estimating of the speed of convergence, as well as a formula to obtain the limit probability distribution for a set of orthogonal invariant subspaces.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, to appear in Journal of Physics A, 201

Switching Quantum Dynamics for Fast Stabilization

Control strategies for dissipative preparation of target quantum states, both pure and mixed, and subspaces are obtained by switching between a set of available semigroup generators. We show that the class of problems of interest can be recast, from a control--theoretic perspective, into a switched-stabilization problem for linear dynamics. This is attained by a suitable affine transformation of the coherence-vector representation. In particular, we propose and compare stabilizing time-based and state-based switching rules for entangled state preparation, showing that the latter not only ensure faster convergence with respect to non-switching methods, but can designed so that they retain robustness with respect to initialization, as long as the target is a pure state or a subspace.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Quantum resources for purification and cooling: fundamental limits and opportunities

Preparing a quantum system in a pure state is ultimately limited by the nature of the system's evolution in the presence of its environment and by the initial state of the environment itself. We show that, when the system and environment are initially uncorrelated and arbitrary joint unitary dynamics is allowed, the system may be purified up to a certain (possibly arbitrarily small) threshold if and only if its environment, either natural or engineered, contains a "virtual subsystem" which has the same dimension and is in a state with the desired purity. Beside providing a unified understanding of quantum purification dynamics in terms of a "generalized swap process," our results shed light on the significance of a no-go theorem for exact ground-state cooling, as well as on the quantum resources needed for achieving an intended purification task.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Engineering Stable Discrete-Time Quantum Dynamics via a Canonical QR Decomposition

We analyze the asymptotic behavior of discrete-time, Markovian quantum systems with respect to a subspace of interest. Global asymptotic stability of subspaces is relevant to quantum information processing, in particular for initializing the system in pure states or subspace codes. We provide a linear-algebraic characterization of the dynamical properties leading to invariance and attractivity of a given quantum subspace. We then construct a design algorithm for discrete-time feedback control that allows to stabilize a target subspace, proving that if the control problem is feasible, then the algorithm returns an effective control choice. In order to prove this result, a canonical QR matrix decomposition is derived, and also used to establish the control scheme potential for the simulation of open-system dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Quantum Markovian Subsystems: Invariance, Attractivity, and Control

We characterize the dynamical behavior of continuous-time, Markovian quantum systems with respect to a subsystem of interest. Markovian dynamics describes a wide class of open quantum systems of relevance to quantum information processing, subsystem encodings offering a general pathway to faithfully represent quantum information. We provide explicit linear-algebraic characterizations of the notion of invariant and noiseless subsystem for Markovian master equations, under different robustness assumptions for model-parameter and initial-state variations. The stronger concept of an attractive quantum subsystem is introduced, and sufficient existence conditions are identified based on Lyapunov's stability techniques. As a main control application, we address the potential of output-feedback Markovian control strategies for quantum pure state-stabilization and noiseless-subspace generation. In particular, explicit results for the synthesis of stabilizing semigroups and noiseless subspaces in finite-dimensional Markovian systems are obtained.Comment: 16 pages, no figures. Revised version with new title, corrected typos, partial rewriting of Section III.E and some other minor change

Discrete-Time Controllability for Feedback Quantum Dynamics

Controllability properties for discrete-time, Markovian quantum dynamics are investigated. We find that, while in general the controlled system is not finite-time controllable, feedback control allows for arbitrary asymptotic state-to-state transitions. Under further assumption on the form of the measurement, we show that finite-time controllability can be achieved in a time that scales linearly with the dimension of the system, and we provide an iterative procedure to design the unitary control actions