The distribution and processing of quantum entanglement form the basis of quantum communication and quantum computing. The realization of the two is difficult because quantum information inherently has a high susceptibility to decoherence, i.e. to uncontrollable information loss to the environment. For entanglement distribution, a proposed solution to this problem is capable of fully eliminating decoherence; namely iterative entanglement distillation. This approach builds on a large number of distillation steps each of which extracts a number of weakly decohered entangled states from a larger number of strongly decohered states. Here, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate iterative distillation of entanglement. Already distilled entangled states were further improved in a second distillation step and also made available for subsequent steps.Our experiment displays the realization of the building blocks required for an entanglement distillation scheme that can fully eliminate decoherence.
``Leakage'' errors are particularly serious errors which couple states within a code subspace to states outside of that subspace thus destroying the error protection benefit afforded by an encoded state. We generalize an earlier method for producing leakage elimination decoupling operations and examine the effects of the leakage eliminating operations on decoherence-free or noiseless subsystems which encode one logical, or protected qubit into three or four qubits. We find that by eliminating the large class of leakage errors, under some circumstances, we can create the conditions for a decohe…
Continuous-variable (CV) systems are attracting increasing attention in the realization of universal quantum computation. Several recent experiments have shown the feasibility of using CV systems to, e.g., encode a qubit into a trapped-ion mechanical oscillator and perform logic gates [Nature 566, 513-517 (2019)]. The essential next step is to protect the encoded qubit from quantum decoherence, e.g., the motional decoherence due to the interaction between a mechanical oscillator and its environment. Here we propose a scheme to suppress quantum decoherence of a single-mode harmonic oscillator u…
Decoherence-induced leakage errors can potentially damage physical or logical qubits by coupling them to other system levels. Here we report the first experimental implementation of Leakage Elimination Operators (LEOs) that aims to reduce this undermining, and that can be applied alongside universal quantum computing. Using IBM's cloud quantum computer, we have studied three potentially applicable examples of subspaces in two- and three-qubit Hilbert spaces and found that the LEOs significantly suppress leakage.
Decoherence-induced leakage errors can couple a physical or encoded qubit to other levels, thus potentially damaging the qubit. They can therefore be very detrimental in quantum computation and require special attention. Here we present a general method for removing such errors by using simple decoupling and recoupling pulse sequences. The proposed gates are experimentally accessible in a variety of promising quantum computing proposals.
The elimination of decoherence of a multiphoton two-state quantum system by using an appropriate external driving field is considered. The multiphoton process caused by the noise field has a supersymmetric Lie algebraic structure. The time-evolution equations for the off-diagonal elements of the density operator of the two-state system are derived in the interaction picture. A simple explicit formula is given for the time-dependent external driving field used to eliminate the decoherence of the multiphoton two-state system.
Solid-state electronic spin systems such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond are promising for applications of quantum information, sensing, and metrology. However, a key challenge for such solid-state systems is to realize a spin coherence time that is much longer than the time for quantum spin manipulation protocols. Here we demonstrate an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude in the spin coherence time ($T_2$) of NV centers compared to previous measurements: $T_2 \approx 0.5$ s at 77 K, which enables $\sim 10^7$ coherent NV spin manipulations before decoherence. We …
We consider an open quantum system described by a Lindblad-type master equation with two times-scales. The fast time-scale is strongly dissipative and drives the system towards a low-dimensional decoherence-free space. To perform the adiabatic elimination of this fast relaxation, we propose a geometric asymptotic expansion based on the small positive parameter describing the time-scale separation. This expansion exploits geometric singular perturbation theory and center-manifold techniques. We conjecture that, at any order, it provides an effective slow Lindblad master equation and a completel…
A scheme is proposed for protecting quantum states from both independent decoherence and cooperative decoherence. The scheme operates by pairing each qubit (two-state quantum system) with an ancilla qubit and by encoding the states of the qubits into the corresponding coherence-preserving states of the qubit-pairs. In this scheme, the amplitude damping (loss of energy) is prevented as well as the phase damping (dephasing) by a strategy called the free-Hamiltonian-elimination We further extend the scheme to include quantum gate operations and show that loss and decoherence during the gate opera…
We revisit the protocols to create maximally entangled states between two Josephson junction (JJ) charge phase qubits coupled to a microwave field in a cavity as a quantum data bus. We devote to analyze a novel mechanism of quantum decoherence due to the adiabatic entanglement between qubits and the data bus, the off-resonance microwave field. We show that even through the variable of the data bus can be adiabatically eliminated, the entanglement between the qubits and data bus remains and can decoher the superposition of two-particle state. Fortunately we can construct a decoherence-free subs…
We study the influence of errors and decoherence on both the performance of Shor's factoring algorithm and Grover's search algorithm, and on the amount of interference in these algorithms using a recently proposed interference measure. We consider systematic unitary errors, random unitary errors, and decoherence processes. We show that unitary errors which destroy the interference destroy the efficiency of the algorithm, too. However, unitary errors may also create useless additional interference. In such a case the total amount of interference can increase, while the efficiency of the quantum…
One of the biggest unsolved problems in physics is the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity. The lack of experimental guidance has made the issue extremely evasive, though various attempts have been made to relate the loss of matter wave coherence to quantum spacetime fluctuations. We present a new approach to the gravitational decoherence near the Planck scale, made possible by recently discovered conformal structure of canonical gravity. This leads to a gravitational analogue of the Brownian motion whose correlation length is given by the Planck length up to a scaling fact…
Powerful Quantum Error Correction Codes (QECCs) are required for stabilizing and protecting fragile qubits against the undesirable effects of quantum decoherence. Similar to classical codes, hashing bound approaching QECCs may be designed by exploiting a concatenated code structure, which invokes iterative decoding. Therefore, in this paper we provide an extensive step-by-step tutorial for designing EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart aided concatenated quantum codes based on the underlying quantum-to-classical isomorphism. These design lessons are then exemplified in the context of ou…
We investigate the decay of two-qubit entanglement caused by the influence of classical noise. We consider the whole spectrum of cases ranging from independent to fully correlated noise affecting each qubit. We take into account different spatial symmetries of noises, and the regimes of noise autocorrelation time. The latter can be either much shorter than the characteristic qubit decoherence time (Markovian decoherence), or much longer (approaching the quasi-static bath limit). We express the entanglement of two-qubit states in terms of expectation values of spherical tensor operators which a…
We propose a robust realization of the two-photon quantum Rabi model in a trapped-ion setting based on a continuous dynamical decoupling scheme. In this manner the magnetic dephasing noise, which is identified as the main obstacle to achieve long time coherent dynamics in ion-trap simulators, can be safely eliminated. More specifically, we investigate the ultrastrong coupling regime of the two-photon quantum Rabi model whose realization in trapped ions involves second-order sideband processes. Hence, the resulting dynamics becomes unavoidably slow and more exposed to magnetic noise requiring a…
Quantum computers herald the arrival of a new era in which previously intractable computational problems will be solved efficiently. However, quantum technology is held down by decoherence, a phenomenon that is omnipresent in the quantum paradigm and that renders quantum information useless when left unchecked. The science of quantum error correction, a discipline that seeks to combine and protect quantum information from the effects of decoherence using structures known as codes, has arisen to meet this challenge. Stabilizer codes, a particular subclass of quantum codes, have enabled fast pro…
The realization of a scalable quantum information processor has emerged over the past decade as one of the central challenges at the interface of fundamental science and engineering. Much progress has been made towards this goal. Indeed, quantum operations have been demonstrated on several trapped ion qubits, and other solid-state systems are approaching similar levels of control. Extending these techniques to achieve fault-tolerant operations in larger systems with more qubits remains an extremely challenging goal, in part, due to the substantial technical complexity of current implementation…
Controlling decoherence is the most challenging task in realizing quantum information hardware. Single electron spins in gallium arsenide are a leading candidate among solid- state implementations, however strong coupling to nuclear spins in the substrate hinders this approach. To realize spin qubits in a nuclear-spin-free system, intensive studies based on group-IV semiconductor are being pursued. In this case, the challenge is primarily control of materials and interfaces, and device nanofabrication. We report important steps toward implementing spin qubits in a predominantly nuclear-spin-fr…
Doubly-parametric quantum transducers, such as electro-opto-mechanical devices, are quickly approaching quantum operation as decoherence mechanisms such as thermal noise, loss, and limited cooperativities are improved. These devices show potential as the critical link between quantum information contained at frequencies as disparate as those in the optical and microwave domains, thus enabling applications such as long distance networking of superconducting quantum computers. However, the requirements on the operating parameters of the transducers necessary to achieve quantum operation have yet…
