Symmetries on Spin Chains: Limited Controllability and Minimal Controls for Full Controllability

Abstract

Symmetry is a fundamentally important concept in many branches of physics. In this work, we discuss two types of symmetries, external symmetry and internal symmetry, which appear frequently in controlled quantum spin chains and apply them to study various controllability problems. For spin chains under single local end control when external symmetries exists, we can rigorously prove that the system is controllable in each of the invariant subspaces for both XXZ and XYZ chains, but not for XX or Ising chains. Such results have direct applications in controlling antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains when the dynamics is naturally confined in the largest excitation subspace. We also address the theoretically important question of minimal control resources to achieve full controllability over the entire spin chain space. In the process we establish a systematic way of evaluating the dynamical Lie algebras and using known symmetries to help identify the dynamical Lie algebra.