Robust control in the quantum domain

Abstract

Progress in quantum physics has made it possible to perform experiments in which individual quantum systems are monitored and manipulated in real time. The advent of such new technical capabilities provides strong motivation for the development of theoretical and experimental methodologies for quantum feedback control. The availability of such methods would enable radically new approaches to experimental physics in the quantum realm. Likewise, the investigation of quantum feedback control will introduce crucial new considerations to control theory, such as the uniquely quantum phenomena of entanglement and measurement back-action. The extension of established analysis techniques from control theory into the quantum domain may also provide new insight into the dynamics of complex quantum systems. We anticipate that the successful formulation of an input-output approach to the analysis and reduction of large quantum systems could have very general applications in nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics and in the nascent field of quantum information theory.