Coffee and Control1 Dec 2025

Sophie Schirmer (Quantum Control 2: Controllability and Robustness)

This month I got to interview Sophie Schirmer about herfascinating work on quantum control, including notions such as controllability and realisability, different types of quantum states (including pure, mixed, and dark states), comparison between different approaches to optimisation, and the quantum phenomena inside MRI scanners!

You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l0TFtckp7zEKCG0wdMHY0nySptrzbkV9ohQExa6ykGg/edit?usp=sharing

Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/

Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/

References

Sophie’s thesis: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/items/63c4205b-9a0d-4622-833f-377f975c8cb3

Herschel Rabitz papers: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/acp/article-abstract/334/1/160/783416/Control-of-quantum-dynamics-The-dream-is-alive?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.259.5101.1581

Control paradigms for quantum engineering: https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2890

Energy landscape shaping as feedback control: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8119551

Kinematic bounds paper: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.58.2684

Dynamic realisability of systems that aren’t completelycontrollable: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/912046

Types of controllability: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0305-4470/35/18/309

More detail in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110171

Hilbert spaces: https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~hunter/book/ch6.pdf

Pure vs mixed states: https://medium.com/@emilmarinov/pure-mixed-and-entangled-quantum-states-84e8a4a8dd16

Controllability with a single actuator: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0721

Dark states and their enlightenment: https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4290

Quantum gravity lecture: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/oxford-mathematics-public-lectures-carlo-rovelli-spin-networks-quantum-structure-spacetime-penroses

Incorporating encoding into quantum system design: https://journals.aps.org/pra/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevA.109.042408

Ilja Kuprov: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5x97wv/professor-ilya-kuprov

Beyondpiecewise constant controls: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.09458

Lyaounov functions: https://underactuated.mit.edu/lyapunov.html

p.s. I would highly recommend the inControl episode on AleksandrLyapunov: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18019902-ep37-a-m-lyapunov-the-general-problem-of-stability-of-motion

Control Lyapunov functions: https://stanford.edu/class/ee363/lectures/io-lyap.pdf

Lyapunov control of quantum systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=5415539

Entanglement generation: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.042305

Bell states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_state

Edmund Jonckheere: https://ee.usc.edu/~jonckhee/

SSV paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9682796

Robust control of open quantum systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9792196

Entanglement generation in a lossy cavity: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9992337

Quantum reservoir engineering: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1474667016316962

Energy landscape shaping paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/addc0d/pdf

Schrodinger’s cat review paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjd/e2015-60464-1

Feynman’s lectures on physics: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

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