Quantum Control Implemented as Combinatorial Optimization

Optimal control theory provides a general means for designing controls to manipulate quantum phenomena. Traditional implementation requires solving Coupled nonlinear equations to obtain the optimal control solution, whereas this work introduces a combinatorial quantum control (CQC) algorithm to avoid this complexity. The CQC technique uses a predetermined toolkit of small time step propagators in conjunction with combinatorial optimization to identify a proper sequence for the toolkit members. Results indicate that the CQC technique exhibits invariance of search effort to the number of system states and very favorable scaling upon comparison to a standard gradient algorithm, taking into consideration that CQC is easily parallelizable. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 31: 151-153, 2010