Programmable Open Quantum Systems
Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 040403 – Published 23 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yqlr-2dhr
Abstract
Programmability is a unifying paradigm for enacting families of quantum transformations via fixed processors and program states, with a fundamental role and broad impact in quantum computation and control. While there has been a shift from viewing open systems solely as a source of error to treating them as a computational resource, their programmability remains largely unexplored. In this Letter, we develop a framework that characterizes and quantifies the programmability of Lindbladian semigroups by combining physically implementable retrieval maps with time-varying program states. We identify quantum programmable classes enabled by symmetry and stochastic structures, including covariant semigroups and fully dissipative Pauli Lindbladians with finite program dimension. We further provide a necessary condition for physical programmability that rules out coherent generators and typical dissipators generating amplitude damping. For such nonphysically programmable cases, we construct quasisampling protocols with finite resources. Finally, we introduce an operational programming cost, defined via the number of samples required to program the Lindbladian, and establish its core structural properties. These results provide a notion of programming cost for Lindbladians, bridge programmable channel theory and open system dynamics, and yield symmetry-driven compression schemes and actionable resource estimates for the semigroup simulation and control in noisy quantum technologies.
