Quantum control techniques for switched electrical networks

We illustrate two techniques for specifying piecewise constant controls for a switched electrical network used in converting power in a DC-DC converter. Both procedures make use of decompositions of SU(2) to obtain controls that satisfy pulse area constraints. One of the methods depends intrinsically on the network and we show that ideal controls can be obtained with this technique. The other approach is general, but requires more computational effort. The systems being studied are single input systems with drift. In this paper no approximations or other artifices are used to remove the drift. Instead, the drift is important in the determination of the controls. Piecewise content controls, such as the ones obtained in this work, are closer to physical reality than other types of controls. We also show how to obtain controls with values of either 0 or 1 which represent the position of the switch.