Collaborative development of tools for optimal control of open quantum systems

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The researchers from University of California-Berkeley will establish collaborations with the group of Professor Christiane Koch in Kassel, Germany for development of theoretical tools for control of quantum systems in realistic environments. The long term goals are to identify the opportunities for quantum control and its limitations under general conditions when a quantum system is not isolated but interacts with its surroundings. This extension of the field of quantum control to the general non-unitary dynamics experienced by quantum systems in contact with an environment is essential for achieving the high fidelity quantum operations that are required by the many new and developing quantum technologies arising from fields including quantum information, ultracold gases and nanoscale devices. The collaborations will combine the expertise in algebraic and analytic methods of quantum control at Berkeley with the numerical optimal control methods used in Kassel, to formulate new, physically motivated and numerically tractable methodologies for determining the extent of controllability of open quantum systems. The research group will work to develop a set of numerical tools for optimization of quantum control on realistic open quantum systems of interest to the quantum physics, chemical physics and quantum device communities. Establishing these collaborations will enabling students and postdocs to learn and implement state of the art high level numerical optimal control theoretic methods in a broad range of quantum dynamical studies. Exchange visits of Berkeley students and postdocs to Kassel will have the broader impact of exposing US graduate students and postdoc to the European research and education system, as well as giving them the opportunity to collaborate with scientists in a European research group.