Incoherent Quantum Control

Conventional approaches for controlling open quantum systems use coherent control which affects the system’s evolution through the Hamiltonian part of the dynamics. Such control, although being extremely efficient for a large variety of problems, has limited capabilities, e.g., if the initial and desired target states have density matrices with different spectra or if a control field needs to be designed to optimally transfer different initial states to the same target state. Recent research works suggest extending coherent control by including active manipulation of the non-unitary (i.e., incoherent) part of the evolution. This paper discusses specifically incoherent control by the environment (e.g., incoherent radiation or a gaseous medium) with a kinematic description of controllability and landscape analyses.