The proposal requests funds for a five day workshop on quantum control to be held at Harvard University in August of 2006. The goal of the workshop is to foster an understanding among control theorists of application-driven needs for methods to design control schemes and an appreciation of the practical constraints on their implementation. We also hope to build an appreciation among experimentalists and theoretical for the range and utility of analysis/design methods from control theory. Finally, we hope to begin the development conceptual and mathematical languages for quantum control. research presentations will be integrated with tutorial lectures. We are requesting funds from several sources with the expectation that we will be able to cover the travel and living expenses of about 55 attendees from outside Cambridge and about 20 local.
Intellectual Merit The workshop aims to bring researchers from diverse field of physics, chemistry, control theory, dynamical systems, stochastics, signal processing and information science to identify mathematical models and control problems whose study and solution will have significant bearing on technologies and experiments involving control and manipulation of quantum systems. Experience has shown that systematic use of methods of control theory that lead to significant improvement in the state of the art methods in fields ranging from magnetic resonance to quantum information processing. The workshop aims to build on these successes to create a unified language and system theory of quantum mechanical systems with potential impact on areas of atomic, molecular and optical physics, coherent spectroscopies in chemistry, magnetic resonance, quantum communication, information and computation.
Broader Impact Important component of this meeting are tutorial sessions that aim to educate students and researchers in areas of physics, chemistry and magnetic resonance, the analysis and design methods of control theory. There will also be tutorial session on basic models that arise in applications involving control and manipulation of quantum systems to researchers and students in engineering. There is a formidable gap between the types of models and analysis commonly utilized by application-oriented practitioners and those studied by control theorists. The workshop aims to bridge this gap.
