Analyzing and Unifying Robustness Measures for Excitation Transfer Control in Spin Networks

Abstract: Recent achievements in quantum control have resulted in advanced techniques for designing controllers for applications in quantum communication, computing, and sensing. However, the susceptibility of such systems to noise and uncertainties necessitates robust controllers that perform effectively under these conditions to realize the full potential of quantum devices. The time-domain log-sensitivity and a recently introduced robustness infidelity measure (RIM) are two means to quantify controller robustness in quantum systems. The former can be found analytically, while the latter requires Monte-Carlo sampling. In this work, the correlation between the log-sensitivity and the RIM for evaluating the robustness of single excitation transfer fidelity in spin chains and rings in the presence of dephasing is investigated. We show that the expected differential sensitivity of the error agrees with the differential sensitivity of the RIM, where the expectation is over the error probability distribution. Statistical analysis also demonstrates that the log-sensitivity and the RIM are linked via the differential sensitivity, and that the differential sensitivity and RIM are highly concordant. This unification of two means (one analytic and one via sampling) to assess controller robustness in a variety of realistic scenarios provides a first step in unifying various tools to model and assess robustness of quantum controllers.