Control of quantum phenomena has grown from a dream to a burgeoning field encompassing wide-ranging experimental and theoretical activities. Theoretical research in this area primarily concerns identification of the principles for controlling quantum phenomena, the exploration of new experimental applications and the development of associated operational algorithms to guide such experiments. Recent experiments with adaptive feedback control span many applications including selective excitation, wave packet engineering and control in the presence of complex environments. Practical procedures are also being developed to execute real-time feedback control considering the resultant back action on the quantum system. This focus issue includes papers covering many of the latest advances in the field.

Focus on Quantum Control Contents

Control of quantum phenomena: past, present and future
Constantin Brif, Raj Chakrabarti and Herschel Rabitz

Biologically inspired molecular machines driven by light. Optimal control of a unidirectional rotor
Guillermo Pérez-Hernández, Adam Pelzer, Leticia González and Tamar Seideman

Simulating quantum search algorithm using vibronic states of I2 manipulated by optimally designed gate pulses
Yukiyoshi Ohtsuki

Efficient coherent control by sequences of pulses of finite duration
Götz S Uhrig and Stefano Pasini

Control by decoherence: weak field control of an excited state objective
Gil Katz, Mark A Ratner and Ronnie Kosloff

Multi-qubit compensation sequences
Y Tomita, J T Merrill and K R Brown

Environment-invariant measure of distance between evolutions of an open quantum system
Matthew D Grace, Jason Dominy, Robert L Kosut, Constantin Brif and Herschel Rabitz

Simplified quantum process tomography
M P A Branderhorst, J Nunn, I A Walmsley and R L Kosut

Achieving 'perfect' molecular discrimination via coherent control and stimulated emission
Stephen D Clow, Uvo C Holscher and Thomas C Weinacht

A convenient method to simulate and visually represent two-photon power spectra of arbitrarily and adaptively shaped broadband laser pulses
M A Montgomery and N H Damrauer

Accurate and efficient implementation of the von Neumann representation for laser pulses with discrete and finite spectra
Frank Dimler, Susanne Fechner, Alexander Rodenberg, Tobias Brixner and David J Tannor

Coherent strong-field control of multiple states by a single chirped femtosecond laser pulse
M Krug, T Bayer, M Wollenhaupt, C Sarpe-Tudoran, T Baumert, S S Ivanov and N V Vitanov

Quantum-state measurement of ionic Rydberg wavepackets
X Zhang and R R Jones

On the paradigm of coherent control: the phase-dependent light-matter interaction in the shaping window
Tiago Buckup, Jurgen Hauer and Marcus Motzkus

Use of the spatial phase of a focused laser beam to yield mechanistic information about photo-induced chemical reactions
V J Barge, Z Hu and R J Gordon

Coherent control of multiple vibrational excitations for optimal detection
S D McGrane, R J Scharff, M Greenfield and D S Moore

Mode selectivity with polarization shaping in the mid-IR
David B Strasfeld, Chris T Middleton and Martin T Zanni

Laser-guided relativistic quantum dynamics
Chengpu Liu, Markus C Kohler, Karen Z Hatsagortsyan, Carsten Muller and Christoph H Keitel

Continuous quantum error correction as classical hybrid control
Hideo Mabuchi

Quantum filter reduction for measurement-feedback control via unsupervised manifold learning
Anne E B Nielsen, Asa S Hopkins and Hideo Mabuchi

Control of the temporal profile of the local electromagnetic field near metallic nanostructures
Ilya Grigorenko and Anatoly Efimov

Laser-assisted molecular orientation in gaseous media: new possibilities and applications
Dmitry V Zhdanov and Victor N Zadkov

Optimization of laser field-free orientation of a state-selected NO molecular sample
Arnaud Rouzee, Arjan Gijsbertsen, Omair Ghafur, Ofer M Shir, Thomas Back, Steven Stolte and Marc J J Vrakking

Controlling the sense of molecular rotation
Sharly Fleischer, Yuri Khodorkovsky, Yehiam Prior and Ilya Sh Averbukh

Optimal control of interacting particles: a multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree-Fock approach
Michael Mundt and David J Tannor

Exact quantum dissipative dynamics under external time-dependent driving fields
Jian Xu, Rui-Xue Xu and Yi Jing Yan

Pulse trains in molecular dynamics and coherent spectroscopy: a theoretical study
J Voll and R de Vivie-Riedle

Quantum control of electron localization in molecules driven by trains of half-cycle pulses
Emil Persson, Joachim Burgdorfer and Stefanie Grafe

Quantum control design by Lyapunov trajectory tracking for dipole and polarizability coupling
Jean-Michel Coron, Andreea Grigoriu, Catalin Lefter and Gabriel Turinici

Sliding mode control of quantum systems
Daoyi Dong and Ian R Petersen

Implementation of fault-tolerant quantum logic gates via optimal control
R Nigmatullin and S G Schirmer

Generalized filtering of laser fields in optimal control theory: application to symmetry filtering of quantum gate operations
Markus Schroder and Alex Brown