We develop a family of monotonically convergent iterative algorithms for solving a wide class of optimal control problems in which a dynamical system interacts nonlinearly with a control. The key idea is to divide a control into identical components and to introduce auxiliary steps to update each component at every iteration step. The algorithms are proved to exhibit monotonic convergence, which is also numerically confirmed through a case study of the control of molecular orientation. The numerical results show that high-quality solutions can be obtained by using the present algorithms.

• Received 19 December 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.77.033414