Volume 74, Nº 5 (2019)

The mathematics of optimal control of quantum systems is of great interest in connection with fundamental problems of physics as well as with existing and prospective applications to quantum technologies. One important problem is the development of methods for constructing controls for quantum systems. One of the commonly used methods is the Krotov method, which was initially proposed outside of quantum control theory in articles by Krotov and Feldman (1978, 1983). This method was used to develop a novel approach to finding optimal controls for quantum systems in [64] (Tannor, Kazakov, and Orlov, 1992), [65] (Somloi, Kazakov, and Tannor, 1993), and in many other works by various scientists. Our survey discusses mathematical aspects of this method for optimal control of closed quantum systems. It outlines various modifications with different forms of the improvement function (for example, linear or linear-quadratic), different constraints on the control spectrum and on the admissible states of the quantum system, different regularisers, and so on. The survey describes applications of the Krotov method to controlling molecular dynamics and Bose–Einstein condensates, and to quantum gate generation. This method is compared with the GRAPE (GRadient Ascent Pulse Engineering) method, the CRAB (Chopped Random-Basis) method, and the Zhu–Rabitz and Maday–Turinici methods.Bibliography: 158 titles.