Robust controllability of two-qubit Hamiltonian dynamics

Abstract

Quantum gates (unitary gates) on physical systems are usually implemented by controlling the Hamiltonian dynamics. When full descriptions of the Hamiltonians parameters is available, the set of implementable quantum gates is easily characterised by quantum control theory. In many real systems, however, the Hamiltonians may include unknown parameters due to the difficulty of precise measurements or instability of the system. In this paper, we consider the situation that some parameters of the Hamiltonian are unknown, but we still want to perform a robust control of a quantum gate irrespectively to the unknown parameters. The existence of such control was previously shown in single-qubit systems, and a constructive method was developed for two-qubit systems provided full single-qubit controls are available. We analytically investigate the robust controllability of two-qubit systems, and apply Lie algebraic approaches to handle the cases where only controlling one of the two qubits is allowed. We also use numerical approaches for these problems since our analytical approaches does not work in some systems.