Controllable Subsystems of Quantum Dynamical Systems

This paper proposes the concept of subsystem controllability for both closed and open quantum dynamical systems, and the existence conditions of controllable subsystems are derived accordingly. It is demonstrated that a controllable subsystem may exist for a closed quantum dynamical system even if the overall system is not controllable. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that, for a class of decoherence-free subsystems of Markovian open quantum dynamical systems, the subsystems are controllable under open-loop coherent control if the initial states of the open systems are factorized. To a certain extent, this paper gives an alternative control theoretical interpretation on why decoherence-free subsystems are useful for quantum computation.