QUANTUM CONTROL

Most current technologies are based on the ability to control the classical world around us using the laws of classical physics.  Richard Feynman, in his famous 1959 essay “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” predicted the unfolding of a whole new era of industrial revolution if we knew how to control the apparently elusive quantum world - an area that has for a long time remained at the fringe of scientific inquiry.

Ability to control phenomena at the quantum level has great implications for various areas including new advances in energy sciences and nano-technology.  Realizing the potentials of this emerging field, the National Research Council (NRC) has put Controlling the Quantum World in the forefront of its 10-year agenda in atomic and molecular physics and the US Department of Energy (DOE) has linked four of its Five Grand Challenges in energy science on quantum control.  Realization of these dreams, however, will require focused commercial interest in the subject.  PMC-AT is pioneering the application of quantum control techniques to problems of immediate national interest.

Quantum control entails the development of methods to steer the dynamics of electrons, atoms and molecules using lasers and other types of coherent perturbations.  Quantum coherence indicates that a system has a well-defined phase, a property that is typically only apparent at the angstrom (10-10m) length scales and femtosecond (10-15s) time scales characteristic of atomic and electronic motion.  This approach has been remarkably successful in diverse applications, including selective chemical dissociation and rearrangement of organic molecules, optimization of laser-induced fluorescence, stimulated Raman emission from molecules, high harmonic generation, and ultrafast semiconductor switching.

Quantum control opens up a new world of radically new approaches to photochemistry, solar energy conversion, and spectroscopy.  PMC-AT is aggressively pushing the envelope of this transformative technology by enabling commercialization of two applications of greatest current interest: ultra-efficient coherent solar energy conversion and developing the first professional library of software tools for quantum design and control engineering.

Selected publications:

R. Chakrabarti, R. Wu, and H. Rabitz, "Quantum multiobservable control," Phys. Rev. A 77:1 (2008).

R. Chakrabarti, R. Wu, and H. Rabitz, "Quantum Pareto optimal control," Phys. Rev. A 78: 3 (2008).

R. Chakrabarti and H. Rabitz, "Quantum control landscapes," Int. Rev. Phys. Chem. 21: 671-735 (2007).