Multi-point Gaussian States, Quadratic–Exponential Cost Functionals, and Large Deviations Estimates for Linear Quantum Stochastic Systems

Abstract

This paper is concerned with risk-sensitive performance analysis for linear quantum stochastic systems interacting with external bosonic fields. We consider a cost functional in the form of the exponential moment of the integral of a quadratic polynomial of the system variables over a bounded time interval. Such functionals are related to more conservative behaviour and robustness of systems with respect to statistical uncertainty, which makes the challenging problems of their computation and minimization practically important. To this end, we obtain an integro-differential equation for the time evolution of the quadratic–exponential functional, which is different from the original quantum risk-sensitive performance criterion employed previously for measurement-based quantum control and filtering problems. Using multi-point Gaussian quantum states for the past history of the system variables and their first four moments, we discuss a quartic approximation of the cost functional and its infinite-horizon asymptotic behaviour. The computation of the asymptotic growth rate of this approximation is reduced to solving two algebraic Lyapunov equations. Further approximations of the cost functional, based on higher-order cumulants and their growth rates, are applied to large deviations estimates in the form of upper bounds for tail distributions. We discuss an auxiliary classical Gaussian–Markov diffusion process in a complex Euclidean space which reproduces the quantum system variables at the level of covariances but has different fourth-order cumulants, thus showing that the risk-sensitive criteria are not reducible to quadratic–exponential moments of classical Gaussian processes. The results of the paper are illustrated by a numerical example and may find applications to coherent quantum risk-sensitive control problems, where the plant and controller form a fully quantum closed-loop system, and other settings with nonquadratic cost functionals.