I am very glad to have participated in the Workshop on Quantum Control, which gave me a rare opportunity to know the research achievements in interdisciplinary fields of quantum control. At the same time I also found that some problems existed and stimulated me to have new ideas about the study. I’ll be happy to take part in a similar workshop next time. In this workshop on Quantum Control (QC), I notice that there are 17 people who are mathematicians, which is half of the total number of participants. Indeed mathematics plays a very important rule in QC, I think, especially in controllability, observability, filter, estimation, identification, stability, convergence and new control method proposed, etc, all of which should combine the mathematics with the individual physical or chemical systems. I am impressed that only those people who are able to combine their own specialty with other specialties such as quantum physics or chemistry, can do well the QC. Owing to the interdisciplinary, QC concerns the physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, system control and engineering. The meaning of a terminology in one field could be understood as another meaning in other field. I find there exist some confusion or mix up in some terms. One example is “optimal control”. Optimal control is a terminology in system control field, which means a kind of special control theory or method called “optimal control (theory)”. One can say that all different kinds of control methods are not optimal except the optimal control (method). So people often want to optimize the parameters of other control methods or controller and do so indeed, which produces another terminology called “control optimization”. Another situation at present is one creates a new term, but the new term is in fact not new and it has the different meaning in one existed. These stimulate me to want to write a paper to describe and set forth the basic concepts, general configuration and various kinds of control methods in a quantum control system. I believe that quantum control belongs to the system control category or field, only the system is a microscopical one.

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The workshop was phenomenal! In addition to continued I met several mathematicians/scientists whose work greatly coincides with my own, particularly Christiane Koch. Based on discussions with Robert Kosut during the workshop, we identified a promising new approach for robust control of uncertain quantum systems. Overall, the workshop was very motivating. It was quite refreshing to learn that mathematicians are also looking at quantum control protocols from a rigorous perspective.

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I have to be absent from the workshop due to lack of travel funds, but from the online discussion, I obtained helpful research insight and a possible collaboration on project or papers. I'm involved in the field of quantum control for many years, and I wish to have the opportunity to do research concerning this topic. Quantum control always stand in the front of other subjects, and it has a great impact on my applied mathematics major. Thanks again for the wonderful workshop at BIRS!

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