Nonholonomic quantum control

In this paper, we review an open-loop evolution control method, called nonholonomic control, based on the alternate application of only two physical perturbations for timings which play the role of adjustable control parameters. We present the algorithm which allows one to explicitly compute the pulse sequence achieving any arbitrarily prescribed unitary evolution in a nonholonomic system, i.e. a system subject to two physical perturbations which, together with the natural Hamiltonian of the system, span the entire Lie algebra u(N). We moreover expose two extensions of our method to open quantum systems which, respectively, aim at preserving the information stored in the system and safely processing this information. The first is based on a generalization of the quantum Zeno effect, while the second is inspired by decoupling pulse techniques. The most important feature of the methods presented here is their universality: they indeed do not rely on any specific assumption on the system, which in particular is not bound to be a collection of two-level systems, or the error model considered, as is usually the case in the literature. Numerical and physical applications of our techniques are also provided.