Bound on the distance between controlled quantum state and target state under decoherence

Abstract

To implement quantum information technologies, carefully designed control for preparing a desired state plays a key role. However, in realistic situation, the actual performance of those methodologies is severely limited by decoherence. Therefore, it is important to evaluate how close we can steer the controlled state to a desired target state under decoherence. In this paper, we provide an upper bound of the distance between the two controlled quantum systems in the presence and absence of decoherence. The bound quantifies the degree of achievement of the control for a given target state under decoherence, and can be straightforwardly calculated without solving any equation. Moreover, the upper bound is applied to derive a theoretical limit of the probability for obtaining the target state under decoherence.