Control of nonlinear quantum systems: From nonlinear Rabi oscillations to robust two-stage optimal inverse engineering
J. J. Zhu, S. Guérin · Physical Review A · 2024
Nonlinear quantum systems behave radically different from their linear counterparts and obstructions, identified as separatrix crossing and bifurcations in the phase space, can prevent their efficient control by standard approaches using adiabatic passage. We provide the exact resonant solution by solving the time-dependent nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation in terms of a Jacobi elliptic integral, interpreting the dynamics with the motion of a planar pendulum. This is referred to as nonlinear Rabi oscillation, which shows an obstruction to complete population transfer above a certain critical value of the nonlinearity strength, corresponding to an oscillating regime of the pendulum. Below this threshold, the so-called $2K$ pulse induces a complete population transfer, associated with a rotating regime of the pendulum, and representing the nonlinear counterpart of the $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulse. We next propose a fast, robust, and high-fidelity control technique by a two-stage optimal inverse engineering strategy. It consists in dynamically compensating (diagonal) third-order nonlinearities, referred to as inverse linearization, combined with robust inverse optimization (RIO) developed for linear systems. We show that a moderate nonlinearity strength dramatically improves robustness.