Quantum properties of the probes used to estimate a classical parameter can be used to attain accuracies that beat the standard quantum limit. When qubits are used to construct a quantum probe, it is known that initializing $n$ qubits in an entangled "cat state," rather than in a separable state, can improve the measurement uncertainty by a factor of $1/\sqrt{n}$. We investigate how the measurement uncertainty is affected when the individual qubits in a probe are subjected to decoherence. In the face of such decoherence, we regard the rate $R$ at which qubits can be generated and the total duration $τ$ of a measurement as fixed resources, and we determine the optimal use of entanglement among the qubits and the resulting optimal measurement uncertainty as functions of $R$ and $τ$.
The diverging responses to parameter variations of systems at quantum critical points motivate schemes of quantum metrology that feature sub-Heisenberg scaling of the sensitivity with the system size (e.g., the number of particles). This sensitivity enhancement is fundamentally rooted in the formation of Schrödinger cat states, or macroscopic superposition states at the quantum critical points. The cat states, however, are fragile to decoherence caused by local noises on individual particles or coupling to local environments, since the local decoherence of any particle would cause the collapse…
In its simplest form, decoherence occurs when a quantum state is entangled with a second state, but the results of measurements made on the second state are not accessible. As the second state has effectively "measured" the first, in this paper we argue that the quantum Fisher information is the relevant metric for predicting and quantifying this kind of decoherence. The quantum Fisher information is usually used to determine an upper bound on how precisely measurements on a state can be used to estimate a classical parameter, and as such it is an important resource. Quantum enhanced metrology…
Quantum metrology pursues high-precision measurements of physical quantities by using quantum resources. However, the decoherence generally hinders its performance. Previous work found that the metrological error tends to diverge in the long-encoding-time regime due to the Born-Markovian approximate decoherence, which is called the no-go theorem of noisy quantum metrology. Here we propose a Gaussian quantum metrology scheme using bimodal quantized optical fields as the quantum probe. It achieves the precision of a sub-Heisenberg limit in the ideal case. However, the Markovian decoherence cause…
Since the dawn of quantum theory, coherence was attributed as a key to understand the weirdness of fundamental concepts like the wave-particle duality and the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Recently, based on a resource theory approach, the notion of quantum coherence was revisited and a plethora of coherence quantifiers were proposed. In this work, we address this issue using the language of coherence orders, developed by the NMR community. This allowed us to investigate the role played by different subspaces of the Hilbert-Schmidt space into physical processes and quantum protocols. We found some…
We provide efficient and intuitive tools for deriving bounds on achievable precision in quantum enhanced metrology based on the geometry of quantum channels and semi-definite programming. We show that when decoherence is taken into account, the maximal possible quantum enhancement amounts generically to a constant factor rather than quadratic improvement. We apply these tools to derive bounds for models of decoherence relevant for metrological applications including: dephasing,depolarization, spontaneous emission and photon loss.
The goal of quantum metrology is the precise estimation of parameters using quantum properties such as entanglement. This estimation usually consists of three steps: state preparation, time evolution during which information of the parameters is encoded in the state, and readout of the state. Decoherence during the time evolution typically degrades the performance of quantum metrology and is considered to be one of the major obstacles to realizing entanglement-enhanced sensing. We show, however, that under suitable conditions, this decoherence can be exploited to improve the sensitivity. Assum…
Optimal control theory, also known as Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, is applied to the quantum parameter estimation in the presence of decoherence. An efficient procedure is devised to compute the gradient of quantum Fisher information with respect to the control parameters and is used to construct the optimal control protocol. The proposed procedure keeps the control problem in the time-invariant form so that both first-order and second-order optimality conditions derived from Pontryagin's Maximum Principle apply; the second-order condition turns out to be crucial when the optimal control co…
In addition to being a very interesting quantum phenomenon, Schrödinger cat swapping has the potential for application in the preparation of quantum states that could be used in metrology and other quantum processing. We study in detail the effects of field decoherence on a cat-swapping system comprising a set of identical qubits, or spins, all coupled to a field mode. We demonstrate that increasing the number of spins actually mitigates the effects of field decoherence on the collapse and revival of a spin Schrödinger cat, which could be of significant utility in quantum metrology and other q…
Near-optimal quantum metrology with few-qubit measurements
Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University（清华大学高等研究院）；Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院量子信息与物质研究所）；Oratomic（奥拉托米克公司）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理珀蒂默研究所）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）
Recent progress in quantum information has led to the start of several large national and industrial efforts to build a quantum computer. Researchers are now working to overcome many scientific and technological challenges. The program's biggest obstacle, a potential showstopper for the entire effort, is the need for high-fidelity qubit operations in a scalable architecture. This challenge arises from the fundamental fragility of quantum information, which can only be overcome with quantum error correction. In a fault-tolerant quantum computer the qubits and their logic interactions must have …
We investigate decoherence channels that are modelled as a sequence of collisions of a quantum system (e.g., a qubit) with particles (e.g., qubits) of the environment. We show that collisions induce decoherence when a bi-partite interaction between the system qubit and an environment (reservoir) qubit is described by the controlled-U unitary transformation (gate). We characterize decoherence channels and in the case of a qubit we specify the most general decoherence channel and derive a corresponding master equation. Finally, we analyze entanglement that is generated during the process of deco…
One mechanism of decoherence of anyon qubit due to interaction with edge states is considered. The calculations are made at low temperature in Markovian and "short-time" approximation. Two approximations are compared.
We present a protocol to perform self-stabilizing measurements on noisy qubits. We employ rapid purification in a rotating frame whose frequency is estimated and periodically updated via a Bayesian estimation scheme. The Bayesian estimation protocol employs the continuous measurement record to improve the estimate, which in turn purifies the qubit more. This procedure stabilizes the qubit. Such an adaptive measurement scheme serves the purpose of purifying the state, while minimally interfering with the phase estimation.
We construct a model of quantum metrology inspired by the computational model known as deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1). Using only one pure qubit together with $l$ fully-mixed qubits we obtain measurement precision at the standard quantum limit, which is typically obtained using the same number of uncorrelated qubits in fully-pure states. The standard quantum limit can be exceeded using an additional qubit, which adds only a small amount of purity. We show that the discord in the final state vanishes only in the limit of attaining infinite precision for the parame…
We study the relation between the sudden death and revival of the entanglement of two qubits in a common squeezed reservoir, and the normal decoherence, by getting closer to the Decoherence Free Subspace and calculating the effect on the death and revival times.
When the nonlinearity of nanomechanical resonator is not negligible, the quantum decoherence of charge qubit is studied analytically. Using nonlinear Jaynes-Cummings model, one explores the possibility of being quantum data bus for nonlinear nanomechanical resonator, the nonlinearity destroys the dynamical quantum information-storage and maintains the revival of quantum coherence of charge qubit. With the calculation of decoherence factor, we demonstrate the influence of the nonlinearity of nanomechanical resonator on engineered decoherence of charge qubit.
We demonstrate that the optimal states in lossy quantum interferometry may be efficiently simulated using low rank matrix product states. We argue that this should be expected in all realistic quantum metrological protocols with uncorrelated noise and is related to the elusive nature of the Heisenberg precision scaling in presence of decoherence.
In this paper we investigate the short-time decoherence of single Josephson charge qubit (JCQ). The measure of decoherence is chosen as the maximum norm of the deviation density operator. It is shown that when the temperature low enough (for example T=30mK), within the elementary gate-operation time tau{g}~12.7ps, the decoherence is smaller than 0.0001 at present setup of JCQ. The Josephson charge qubit is suitable to take the blocks for quantum computations according to the DiVincenzo low decoherence criterion.
An entangled state prepared in the decoherence free sub-space together with a Ramsey type measurement can probe parity violation in heavy alkali ions like Ba+ or Ra+. Here we propose an experiment with Ba+ ions as an example to measure the small parity violating effect in this system.
At first, we generally investigate the short-time decoherence of a qubit nonlinearly coupling with a bath. The measure of the decoherence is chosen as the maximum norm of the deviation density operator. Then we concretely investigate the Josephson charge qubit (JCQ) model. It is shown that at the temperature T=30mK, the loss of fidelity (due to decoherence) of the JCQ is bigger than the DiVincenzo low decoherence criterion. The decoherence will decrease with the decrease of the experimental temperature. When the temperature decreases to T=0.3mK the DiVincenzo low decoherence criterion can be s…
Quantum resources, such as entanglement, can decrease the uncertainty of a parameter-estimation procedure beyond what is classically possible. This phenomenon is well described for noiseless systems with asymptotically many measurement resources by the Quantum Cramer-Rao Bound, but no general description exists for the regime of limited measurement resources. We address this problem by defining a Bayesian quantifier for uncertainty suitable for the regime of limited resources, and by developing a mathematical description for a parameter-estimation procedure which uses qubit probes to estimate …
In this paper we investigate decoherence times of a double quantum dot (DQD) charge qubit due to it coupling with acoustic phonon baths. We individually consider the acoustic piezoelectric as well as deformation coupling phonon baths in the qubit environment. The decoherence times are calculated with two kinds of methods. One of them is based on the qusiadiabatic propagator path integral (QUAPI) and the other is based on Bloch equations, and two kinds of results are compared. It is shown that the theoretical decoherence times of the DQD charge qubit are shorter than the experimental reported r…
Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits in spin-boson (SB) and spin-intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO)-bath (SIB) models. The cases that the environment baths with low and medium frequencies are investigated. It is shown that the qubits in SB and SIB models have the same decoherence and relaxation as the baths with low frequencies. However, the qubits in the two models have different decoherence and relaxation as the baths with medium frequencies. The decoherence and relaxation of the qubit in SIB model can be modulated through chang…
We study a model of dephasing (decoherence) in a two-state quantum system (qubit) coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators. An exact analytic solution for the reduced dynamics of a two-state system in this model has been obtained previously for factorizing initial states of the combined system. We show that the model admits exact solutions for a large class of correlated initial states which are typical in the theory of quantum measurements. We derive exact expressions for the off-diagonal elements of the qubit density matrix, which hold for an arbitrary strength of coupling between the qubit…
We analyze robustness of decoherence-free (DF) subspace in charge qubits when there are a local structure and non-uniformity that violate collective decoherence measurement condition. We solve master equations of up to four charge qubits and a detector as two serially coupled quantum point contacts (QPC) with an island structure. We show that robustness of DF states is strongly affected by local structure as well as by non-uniformities of qubits.
Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits coupled to an Ohmic bath directly and via an intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO). Here, we suppose the oscillation frequencies of the bath modes are higher than the IHO's. When we choose suitable parameters the qubits in the two models may have almost same decoherence and relaxation times. However, the decoherence and relaxation times of the qubit in the qubit-IHO-bath model can be modulated through changing the coupling coefficients of the qubit-IHO and IHO-bath and the oscillation frequency of…
We study the suppression of noise-induced phase decoherence in a single atomic qubit by employing pulse sequences. The atomic qubit is composed of a single neutral atom in a far-detuned optical dipole trap and the phase decoherence may originate from the laser intensity and beam pointing fluctuations as well as magnetic field fluctuations. We show that suitable pulse sequences may prolongate the qubit coherence time substantially as comparing to the conventional spin echo pulse.
We study the impact of many-body effects on the fundamental precision limits in quantum metrology. On the one hand such effects may lead to non-linear Hamiltonians, studied in the field of non-linear quantum metrology, while on the other hand they may result in decoherence processes that cannot be described using single-body noise models. We provide a general reasoning that allows to predict the fundamental scaling of precision in such models as a function of the number of atoms present in the system. Moreover, we describe a computationally efficient approach that allows for a simple derivatio…
Non-adiabatic holonomic quantum gate in decoherence-free subspaces is of greatly practical importance due to its built-in fault tolerance, coherence stabilization virtues, and short run-time. Here we propose some compact schemes to implement two- and three-qubit controlled unitary quantum gates and Fredkin gate. For the controlled unitary quantum gates, the unitary operator acting on the target qubit is an arbitrary single-qubit gate operation. The controlled quantum gates can be directly implemented using non-adiabatic holonomy in decoherence-free subspaces and the required resource for the d…
It is known that a quantum system with finite degrees of freedom can simulate a composite of a system and an environment if the state of the hypothetical environment is randomized by external manipulation. We show theoretically that any phase decoherence phenomena of a single qubit can be simulated with a two-qubit system and demonstrate experimentally two examples: one is phase decoherence of a single qubit in a transmission line, and the other is that in a quantum memory. We perform NMR experiments employing a two-spin molecule and clearly measure decoherence for both cases. We also prove ex…
We propose a quantum-information processor that consists of decoherence-free logical qubits encoded into arrays of dipole-coupled qubits. High-fidelity single-qubit operations are performed deterministically within a decoherence-free subsystem without leakage via global addressing of bichromatic laser fields. Two-qubit operations are realized locally with four physical qubits, and between separated logical qubits using linear optics. We show how to prepare cluster states using this method. We include all non-nearest-neighbor effects in our calculations, and we assume the qubits are not located…
We investigate the decay of entanglement, due to decoherence, of multi-qubit systems that are initially prepared in highly (in some cases maximally) entangled states. We assume that during the decoherence processes each qubit of the system interacts with its own, independent environment. We determine, for systems with a small number of qubits and for various decoherence channels, the initial states exhibiting the most robust entanglement. We also consider a restricted version of this robustness optimization problem, only involving states equivalent under local unitary transformations to the |G…
In this paper we investigate decoherence time of superconducting Josephson charge qubit (JCQ). Two kinds of methods, iterative tensor multiplication (ITM) method derived from the qusiadiabatic propagator path integral (QUAPI) and Bloch equations method are used. Using the non-Markovian ITM method we correct the decoherence time predicted by Bloch equations method. By comparing the exact theoretical result with the experimental data we suggest that the Ohmic noise plays the central role to the decoherence of the JCQ.
A theory of dynamical control by modulation for optimal decoherence reduction is developed. It is based on the non-Markovian Euler-Lagrange equation for the energy-constrained field that minimizes the average dephasing rate of a qubit for any given dephasing spectrum.
We study the time evolution of a qubit linearly coupled with a quantum environment under a sequence of short pi pulses. Our attention is focused on the case where qubit-environment interactions induce the decoherence with population decay. We assume that the environment consists of a set of bosonic excitations. The time evolution of the reduced density matrix for the qubit is calculated in the presence of periodic short pi pulses. We confirm that the decoherence is suppressed if the pulse interval is shorter than the correlation time for qubit-environment interactions.
We consider decoherence of quantum registers, which consist of the qubits sited approximately periodically in space. The sites of the qubits are permitted to have a small random variance. We derive the explicit conditions under which the qubits can be assumed decohering independently. In other circumstances, the qubits are decohered cooperatively. We describe two kinds of collective decoherence. In each case, a scheme is proposed for reducing the collective decoherence. The schemes operate by encoding the input states of the qubits into some ''subdecoherent'' states.
In this paper we investigate a open two-qubit model whose dynamics is not exactly solvable. When the initial state is the maximum entangled state, as the exactly solvable open two-qubit model [D. Tolkunov and V. Privman, Phys. Rev. A 71, 060308(R) (2005)], the decay of entanglement of formation of the model, expressed by concurrence is also governed by the product of suppression factors describing decoherence of the subsystems (qubits). However, if the initial state is not the maximum entangled state, its concurrence will decrease faster than the product of the suppression factors describing d…
In this paper we study the decoherence and purity of a driven solid-state qubit in the Ohmic bath by using the method based on the master equation. At first, instead of solving the master equation we investigate the coefficients of the equation which describe the shift in frequency, diffusive, decoherence, and so on. It is shown that one of the coefficients (we called it decoherence coefficient) is crucial to the decoherence of the qubit in the model. Then we investigate the evolution of the purity of the state in the model. From the analysis of the purity we see that the decoherence time of t…
We study one-way quantum deficit of two-qubit $X$ states systematically from analytical derivations. An effective approach to compute one-way quantum deficit of two-qubit $X$ states has been provided. Analytical results are presented as for detailed examples. Moreover, we demonstrate the decoherence of one-way quantum deficit under phase damping channel.
Different from the previous works on generating entangled states, this work is focused on how to transfer the prepared entangled states onto memory qubits for protecting them against decoherence. We here consider a physical system consisting of $n$ operation qubits and $2n$ memory qubits placed in a cavity or coupled to a resonator. A method is presented for transferring $n$-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled states from the operation qubits (i.e., information processing cells) onto the memory qubits (i.e., information memory elements with long decoherence time). The transferred…
We analyze decoherence of a quantum register in the absence of non-local operations i.e. of $n$ non-interacting qubits coupled to an environment. The problem is solved in terms of a sum rule which implies linear scaling in the number of qubits. Each term involves a single qubit and its entanglement with the remaining ones. Two conditions are essential: first decoherence must be small and second the coupling of different qubits must be uncorrelated in the interaction picture. We apply the result to a random matrix model, and illustrate its reach considering a GHZ state coupled to a spin bath.
Decoherence may significantly affect the polarization state of optical pulses propagating in dispersive media because of the unavoidable presence of more than a single frequency in the envelope of the pulse. Here we report on the suppression of polarization decoherence in a ring cavity obtained by properly retooling for photonic qubits the ``bang-bang'' protection technique already employed for nuclear spins and nuclear-quadrupole qubits. Our results show that bang-bang control can be profitably extended to quantum information processes involving flying polarization qubits.
We study non-perturbatively the time evolution of a qubit subject to amplitude-damping noise. We show that at strong coupling the qubit decoherence can be quenched owing to large environment feedbacks, such that the qubit can evolve coherently even in the long-time limit. As an application, we show that for a quantum channel that consists of two independent qubits subject to uncorrelated local amplitude-damping noises, it can maintain at strong coupling finite entanglement and better than classical teleportation fidelity at long times.
We study quantum teleportation between two different types of optical qubits using hybrid entanglement as a quantum channel under decoherence effects. One type of qubit employs the vacuum and single photon states for the basis, called a single-rail single-photon qubit, and the other utilizes coherent states of opposite phases. We find that teleportation from a single-rail single-photon qubit to a coherent state qubit is better than the opposite direction in terms of fidelity and success probability. We compare our results with those using a different type of hybrid entanglement between a polar…
In this paper we investigate the short-time decoherence from Ohmic and 1/f noise of single Josephson charge qubit (JCQ). At first, we use the short-time approximation to obtain the dynamics of the open JCQ. Then we calculate the decoherence the measure of which is chosen as the maximum norm of the deviation density operator. It is shown that the decoherence from 1/f noise plays the central role. The total decoherence from Ohmic and 1/f noise is serious at present experiential conditions according to the DiVincenzo criterion.
The thesis is contributed to the study of the decoherence dynamics of dissipative qubit systems. We reveal the profound impact of the formation of a bound state between the qubit and its local environment on the decoherence dynamics of qubit system in non-Markovian regime. We find that the decoherence can be suppressed greatly under the non-Markovian dynamics when the bound state is formed. Consequently, the entanglement can be partially preserved in the steady state. A criterion on this decoherence/disentanglement suppression is given explicitly. It can give a useful guideline on the decohere…
We propose a geometric phase gate in a decoherence-free subspace with trapped ions. The quantum information is encoded in the Zeeman sublevels of the ground-state and two physical qubits to make up one logical qubit with ultra long coherence time. Single- and two-qubit operations together with the transport and splitting of linear ion crystals allow for a robust and decoherence-free scalable quantum processor. For the ease of the phase gate realization we employ one Raman laser field on four ions simultaneously, i.e. no tight focus for addressing. The decoherence-free subspace is left neither …
We summarize our results on decoherence for short- to intermediate-time dynamics of an externally controlled two-state quantum system - a qubit - interacting with thermal bosonic environment. The developed approximation schemes are illustrated for an adiabatic model with time-dependent gate control, and for a model with rotating-wave gate function.
We investigate the time evolution of entanglement for bipartite systems of arbitrary dimensions under the influence of decoherence. For qubits, we determine the precise entanglement decay rates under different system-environment couplings, including finite temperature effects. For qudits, we show how to obtain upper bounds for the decay rates and also present exact solutions for various classes of states.
