Project description
Revolutionising quantum control
Quantum control is an ambitious framework for steering dynamics from initial states to arbitrary desired final states. However, most generic quantum control schemes to date have been limited by heavy requirements on the controllability of either the system Hamiltonian or a set of measurement operators, which makes it challenging to efficiently realise these schemes in many realistic scenarios. The ERC-funded MECTRL project aims to overcome these limitations and make many-body quantum control more efficient and reliable. The project will use a combination of fixed many-body time evolution and precise knowledge of quantum back-action to engineer the dynamics in sufficiently small but interesting many body systems. It will attempt to build next-generation optimisation computer algorithms with a higher level of cognition.
Objective
Quantum control is an ambitious framework for steering dynamics from initial states to arbitrary desired final states. It has over the past decade been used extensively with immense success for control of low- dimensional systems in as varied fields as molecular dynamics and quantum computation. Only recently have efforts been initiated to extend this to higher-dimensional many-body systems. Most generic quantum control schemes to date, however, put quite heavy requirements on the controllability of either the system Hamiltonian or a set of measurement operators. This will in many realistic scenarios prohibit an efficient realization.
Within this proposal, I will develop a new quantum control scheme, which is minimalistic on system requirements and therefore ideally suited for the efficient and reliable optimization of many-body control problems. The fundamentally new ingredient is the total quantum evolution dictated by a combination of fixed many-body time evolution and the precise knowledge of the quantum back-action due to repeated quantum non-destruction (QND) measurements of a single projection operator.
The main focus of this proposal is theoretical and experimental quantum engineering of the dynamics in systems, which are sufficiently small to calculate the measurement back-action exactly and sufficiently large to have interesting many-body properties.
Recent experimental advances in single site manipulation of bosons in optical lattices have enabled the high fidelity preparation exactly such mesoscopic samples of atoms (5-50). This forms an ideal starting point for many-body quantum control, and we will i.a. demonstrate engineering of quantum phase transitions and preparation of highly non-classical Schödinger cat states.
Finally, using the results from an online graphical interface allowing users of the internet to solve quantum problems we will attempt to build next-generation optimization computer algorithms with a higher level of cognition built in.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternet
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesquantum physics
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencebig data
- natural sciencesphysical sciencescondensed matter physicsbose-einstein condensates
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark