IQI Weekly Seminar

Many control systems are inherently infinite dimensional when they are described by partial differential equations or have internal transport delays. Currently there is renewed interest in the control of these kinds of systems especially in flexible aerospace structures, smart electric power grids, and the quantum information and computing field. Since the dynamics of these systems will not be perfectly known, it is especially of interest to control these systems adaptively via low-order finite-dimensional controllers in the presence of persistent disturbances.

In our work, we have developed direct model reference adaptive control and disturbance rejection with very low-order adaptive gain laws for both large-scale finite dimensional systems and infinite dimensional systems whose states reside in a Hilbert Space. In this presentation I want to first give an introduction to some basic ideas in control theory, and then talk about some of our recent work in infinite dimensional control systems, and finally talk about how these ideas can be used in control of quantum systems to improve the transmission of quantum information. I think this will certainly be fun and how much profit, beyond intellectual capital, remains to be seen.