Principles and applications of control in quantum systems

We describe in this article some key themes that emerged during a Caltech/AFOSR Workshop on 'Principles and Applications of Control in Quantum Systems' (PRACQSYS), held 21-24 August 2004 at the California Institute of Technology. This workshop brought together engineers, physicists and applied mathematicians to construct an overview of new challenges that arise when applying constitutive methods of control theory to nanoscale systems whose behaviour is manifestly quantum. Its primary conclusions were that the number of experimentally accessible quantum control systems is steadily growing (with a variety of motivating applications), that appropriate formal perspectives enable straightforward application of the essential ideas of classical control to quantum systems, and that quantum control motivates extensive study of model classes that have previously received scant consideration. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.