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Experimental demonstration of quantum optimal control via the alternating control-evolution protocol |
| Ruiqi Tang(汤睿琪)1, Yanjun Hou(侯彦君)1, Zhenyue Du(杜臻越)1, Zhuoyue Xu(徐卓越)1, Yuquan Chen(陈昱全)1,†, Zhaokai Li(李兆凯)1,2,3,‡, and Xinhua Peng(彭新华)1,2,3 |
1 Laboratory of Spin Magnetic Resonance, School of Physical Sciences, Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Scientific Instrument Development and Application, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China;
2 Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China;
3 Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230088, China |
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Abstract As a crucial component of quantum technologies, quantum optimal control enables the high-fidelity engineering of desired quantum states and operations. Conventional approaches, such as the widely used gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) algorithm, typically rely on dense pulse sequences with a large number of control parameters, leading to inefficient optimization and increased sensitivity to experimental imperfections. In this work, we propose the alternating control–evolution (ACE) protocol, a flexible framework that constructs quantum operations by interleaving elementary control operations with tunable free evolutions, thereby enabling the design of sparse pulse sequences that exploit intrinsic system dynamics. This design substantially reduces the number of control parameters while retaining high expressibility and control fidelity. Numerical simulations on nuclear magnetic resonance systems show that the ACE protocol achieves more than a 20-fold reduction in the number of control parameters compared to GRAPE, with comparable fidelity in state preparation tasks. We further experimentally validate the ACE protocol on a four-qubit NMR platform by preparing a Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state with a fidelity of 99.52%. These results demonstrate that the ACE protocol provides an efficient and experimentally robust strategy for quantum optimal control, particularly suitable for the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era.
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Received: 08 January 2026
Revised: 15 March 2026
Accepted manuscript online: 25 March 2026
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PACS:
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03.67.Ac
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(Quantum algorithms, protocols, and simulations)
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76.60.-k
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(Nuclear magnetic resonance and relaxation)
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| Fund: This work is supported by Quantum Science and Technology — National Science and Technology Major Project of China (Grant Nos. 2024ZD0302000 and 2021ZD0303205), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 92165108, 12261160569, 12150014, and 11927811), and the XPLORER Prize. |
Corresponding Authors:
Yuquan Chen, Zhaokai Li
E-mail: yuquanchen@ustc.edu.cn;zkli@ustc.edu.cn
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Cite this article:
Ruiqi Tang(汤睿琪), Yanjun Hou(侯彦君), Zhenyue Du(杜臻越), Zhuoyue Xu(徐卓越), Yuquan Chen(陈昱全), Zhaokai Li(李兆凯), and Xinhua Peng(彭新华) Experimental demonstration of quantum optimal control via the alternating control-evolution protocol 2026 Chin. Phys. B 35 060302
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