Coherent quantum LQG control

TL;DR

This paper formulates a quantum LQG control problem for fully quantum systems with physical realizability constraints, proposing a numerical solution method and demonstrating improved performance over classical controllers.

Contribution

It introduces a constrained quantum LQG control framework with a numerical solution approach, advancing coherent feedback control design.

Findings

Numerical solutions for quantum controllers were successfully obtained.

Fully quantum controllers outperform classical controllers in specific scenarios.

The problem is computationally hard due to additional constraints.

Abstract

Based on a recently developed notion of physical realizability for quantum linear stochastic systems, we formulate a quantum LQG optimal control problem for quantum linear stochastic systems where the controller itself may also be a quantum system and the plant output signal can be fully quantum. Such a control scheme is often referred to in the quantum control literature as "coherent feedback control.'' It distinguishes the present work from previous works on the quantum LQG problem where measurement is performed on the plant and the measurement signals are used as input to a fully classical controller with no quantum degrees of freedom. The difference in our formulation is the presence of additional non-linear and linear constraints on the coefficients of the sought after controller, rendering the problem as a type of constrained controller design problem. Due to the presence of these constraints our problem is inherently computationally hard and this also distinguishes it in an important way from the standard LQG problem. We propose a numerical procedure for solving this problem based on an alternating projections algorithm and, as initial demonstration of the feasibility of this approach, we provide fully quantum controller design examples in which numerical solutions to the problem were successfully obtained. For comparison, we also consider the case of classical linear controllers that use direct or indirect measurements, and show that there exists a fully quantum linear controller which offers an improvement in performance over the classical ones.