Control of quantum phenomena: past, present and future

By Constantin Brif, R. Chakrabarti, Herschel A. Rabitz. 2009

858 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Quantum control is concerned with active manipulation of physical and chemical processes on the atomic and molecular scale. This work presents a perspective of progress in the field of control over quantum phenomena, tracing the evolution of theoretical concepts and experimental methods from early developments to the most recent advances. Among numerous theoretical insights and technological improvements that produced the present state-of-the-art in quantum control, there have been several breakthroughs of foremost importance. On the technology side, the current experimental successes would be impossible without the development of intense femtosecond laser sources and pulse shapers. On the theory side, the two most critical insights were (i) realizing that ultrafast atomic and molecular dynamics can be controlled via manipulation of quantum interferences and (ii) understanding that optimally shaped ultrafast laser pulses are the most effective means for producing the desired quantum interference patterns in the controlled system. Finally, these theoretical and experimental advances were brought together by the crucial concept of adaptive feedback control (AFC), which is a laboratory procedure employing measurement-driven, closed-loop optimization to identify the best shapes of femtosecond laser control pulses for steering quantum dynamics towards the desired objective. Optimization in AFC experiments is guided by a learning algorithm, with stochastic methods proving to be especially effective. AFC of quantum phenomena has found numerous applications in many areas of the physical and chemical sciences, and this paper reviews the extensive experiments. Other subjects discussed include quantum optimal control theory, quantum control landscapes, the role of theoretical control designs in experimental realizations and real-time quantum feedback control. The paper concludes with a perspective of open research directions that are likely to attract significant attention in the future.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Control and Systems Engineering, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/80e1fd1b1b57146a532491f128c1cfe24dc72a4a

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Citations in the corpus

Optimization of Convex Functions with Random Pursuit (2011, background): “21] or interpolation methods [8] randomized schemes often show faster and more robust performance on ill-conditioned benchmark problems [2] and certain real-world applications such as quantum control [5] and parameter estimation in systems biology networks [39]. While probabilistic convergence guara”
Review of Some Promising Fractional Physical Models (2013, background): “ulation of physical and chemical processes on the atomic and molecular scale. Controlled manipulation by atomic and molecular quantum systems has attracted a lot of research attention in recent years [69, 70, 71]. Note that the models to control of open quantum system dynamics is a very important su”
Harnessing the Power of the Second Quantum Revolution (2020, methodology): “…to be universal, it must be “controllable,” meaning that for any unitary map V on the Hilbert space, given the control Hamiltonians, there exist control waveforms { λ i ( t ) } and time T ≥ T ∗ such that U ( T ) = V [104]; the minimum time T ∗ sets the so-called “quantum speed limit” [105].”
Training Schrödinger’s cat: quantum optimal control (2015, methodology): “The further development of this field of research offers many beneficial effects for today’s and tomorrow’s society, related to health through faster, better, safer diagnostics and treatment, secure communication in a digital world, highly accurate navigation systems, more efficient and clean harves”
Quantum control of molecular rotation (2018, neutral): “Phys., Vol. 91, No. 3, July–September 2019 035005-2 control framework (Brif, Chakrabarti, and Rabitz, 2010; Glaser et al., 2015) is currently missing.”