Steered quantum dynamics for energy minimization.

We introduce a quantum optimal control algorithm for energy minimization that combines the diffeomorphic modulation under observable response preserving homotopy (D-MORPH) gradient and the Broyden Fletcher Goldfarb Shanno (BFGS) iterative scheme for nonlinear optimization. An extended set of controls defining the time-dependent mass, dipole moment, and external perturbational field are optimized to find an effective Hamiltonian that steers the dynamics of the system into the global minimum without getting trapped into local minima. The algorithm is illustrated as applied to energy minimization on rugged surfaces and golf potentials comparable to those previously explored for testing quantum annealing methodologies.