Section: Overall Objectives

Overall objectives

The research activities of QUANTIC team lie at the border between theoretical and experimental efforts in the emerging field of quantum systems engineering. Our research topics are in direct continuation of a historic research theme of Inria, classical automatic control, while opening completely new perspectives toward quantum control: by developing a new mathematical system theory for quantum circuits, we will realize the components of a future quantum information processing unit.

One of the unique features of our team concerns the large spectrum of our subjects going from the mathematical analysis of the physical systems (development of systematic mathematical methods for control and estimation of quantum systems), and the numerical analysis of the proposed solutions, to the experimental implementation of the quantum circuits based on these solutions. This is made possible by the constant and profound interaction between the applied mathematicians and the physicists in the group. Indeed, this close collaboration has already brought a significant acceleration in our research efforts. In a long run, this synergy should lead to a deeper understanding of the physical phenomena behind these emerging technologies and the development of new research directions within the field of quantum information processing.

Towards this ultimate task of practical quantum digital systems, the approach of the QUANTIC team is complementary to the one taken by teams with expertise in quantum algorithms. Indeed, we start from the specific controls that can be realistically applied on physical systems, to propose designs which combine them into hardware shortcuts implementing robust behaviors useful for quantum information processing. Whenever a significant new element of quantum engineering architecture is developed, the initial motivation is to prove an enabling technology with major impact for the groups working one abstraction layer higher: on quantum algorithms but also on e.g. secure communication and metrology applications.