Efficient algorithms for the laboratory discovery of optimal quantum controls

The laboratory closed-loop optimal quantum control, which is expressed as minimizing a suitable cost functional, implemented through an optimization algorithm, was discussed. It was observed that most commonly used search algorithms are variants of genetic algorithms (GA). The GA and simplex algorithm have known global optimization properties, which was found to be less definitive about nature of functional surface. It was found that as a by-product of search for good optimization algorithms, a discrete descent algorithm whose convergence properties provided additional evidence that local minima of cost functional are of good quality.