Abstract
High-fidelity preparation of quantum states in an interacting many-body system is often hindered by the lack of knowledge of such states and by limited decoherence times. Here, we study a quantum optimal control (QOC) approach for fast generation of quantum ground states in a finite-sized Jaynes-Cummings lattice with unit filling. Our result shows that the QOC approach can generate quantum many-body states with high fidelity when the evolution time is above a threshold time, and it can significantly outperform the adiabatic approach. We study the dependence of the threshold time on the parameter constraints and the connection of the threshold time with the quantum speed limit. We also show that the QOC approach can be robust against control errors. Our result can lead to advances in the application of the QOC to many-body state preparation.