Can math beat gamers in Quantum Moves
In a recent work on quantum state preparation, S{\o}rensen and colleagues explore the possibility of using video games to help design quantum control protocols. The authors present a game called "Quantum Moves" in which gamers have to move an atom from A to B by means of optical tweezers. They report that, players succeed where purely numerical optimization fails [1] Moreover, by harnessing the player strategies they can outperform the most prominent established numerical methods [1] The aim of this manuscript is to analyze the problem in detail and show that those claims are untenable. In fact a simple stochastic local optimization method can easily find very good solutions to this problem in a few 1000 trials rather than the astronomical $7.4\times 10^{8} trials of the most successful optimization method reported in [1] Next, counter diabatic driving is used to generate protocols without resorting to numeric optimization; the protocols are shown to outperform virtually all players. The analysis moreover results in an accurate analytic estimate of the quantum speed limit which, apart from zero point motion, is shown to be entirely classical in nature. The latter might explain why gamers are remarkably good at the game.