A Generic and Robust Agent to Accomplish Quantum Control Tasks

In view of inevitable uncertainties or disturbances in quantum systems, efficient and systematic numerical methods for robust control design are of significant importance. Although reinforcement learning has recently been applied in the field of quantum control, completing quantum control tasks in practice is always challenging due to the lack of data from real-world environments. In this paper, a generic and robust agent can be constructed catering to system imperfections by applying a curriculum meta-reinforcement learning quantum control (CMQC) approach. The proposed approach incorporates an objective module that can break down a complex quantum control objective into multiple sub-objectives using an exponential decay strategy, enabling the agent to gradually learn to solve the final goal through experience transfer and knowledge consolidation. Furthermore, a meta module is employed to achieve adaptation to environmental imperfections. This allows the agent to adjust its strategy in real time, obtaining strong robustness even in the presence of uncertainties. The superiority of CMQC is demonstrated in robust control problems regarding state transfer in a two-level quantum system and realization of the R_x(π) gate, with reduced computational cost and improved accuracy achieved. Our results pave the way towards more reliable and secure quantum information processing with uncertainties involved.