Simultaneous global exact controllability of an arbitrary number of 1D bilinear Schrödinger equations (Q476108)

The authors consider a system of linear Schrödinger equations that describe the evolution of 1D quantum particles submitted to an external laser field. In their setting, \(N\) identical and independent particles are considered. The main result of the article is the global exact controllability of the system for arbitrary number of particles, arbitrary potential \(V\), and a generic dipole moment \(\mu\). To achieve the main result, the authors proved first that under favorable hypotheses on \(V\) and \(\mu\), any initial condition can be driven arbitrarily close to some finite sum of eigenfunctions (approximate controllability). Next, the local exact controllability of the system around specific finite sums of eigenfunctions is proven. The results are obtained under certain favorable assumptions on the spectrum of the operator involved in the system, and using a compactness argument. Case of an arbitrary potential is dealt with a perturbation argument. A combination of the approximate and exact controllabilities proven earlier leads to the proof of the main theorem of the article. The theorem is an extension of results on exact controllability for a single particle to simultaneous controllability of \(N\) particles. At he same time, it is also an improvement of the existing results in 1D for \(N=1\) case.