2007/07/12 by J. Werschnik, E. K. U. Gross, Werschnik, J. +1 · 12 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser Design and Applications #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0707.1883
arxiv created 2007/07/12 · openalex publication_date 2007/07/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The control of quantum dynamics via specially tailored laser pulses is a long-standing goal in physics and chemistry. Partly, this dream has come true, as sophisticated pulse shaping experiments allow to coherently control product ratios of chemical reactions. The theoretical design of the laser pulse to transfer an initial state to a given final state can be achieved with the help of quantum optimal control theory (QOCT). This tutorial provides an introduction to QOCT. It shows how the control equations defining such an optimal pulse follow from the variation of a properly defined functional. We explain the most successful schemes to solve these control equations and show how to incorporate additional constraints in the pulse design. The algorithms are then applied to simple quantum systems and the obtained pulses are analyzed. Besides the traditional final-time control methods, the tutorial also presents an algorithm and an example to handle time-dependent control targets.