Gradient-free pulse optimization for adiabatic control in open few-body quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust, gradient-free pulse optimization method for adiabatic control in open quantum systems, demonstrating improved efficiency and robustness across various platforms including IBM Quantum hardware.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel gradient-free optimization approach for adiabatic quantum control, outperforming existing methods and applicable to different quantum hardware types.

Findings

Outperforms ensemble optimization in tests

Successfully implemented on IBM Quantum hardware

Effective for atomic and superconducting qubits

Abstract

We present a robust pulse optimization method for adiabatic population transfer and adiabatic quantum computation. The approach relies on identifying control pulses that keep the evolving quantum system close to its instantaneous ground state. By combining advanced gradient-free optimization tools with specialized cost functions for adiabatic control, it achieves both efficiency and robustness. To demonstrate its generality, we apply the method to three examples involving both atomic and superconducting qubits. We test different optimization cost functions and discretization bases, showing that the approach outperforms ensemble optimization. Finally, to verify its performance on real quantum hardware, we implement digitized adiabatic qubit control using the optimized pulses on the IBM Quantum cloud.