The fast and faithful preparation of the ground state of quantum systems is a challenging task but crucial for several applications in the realm of quantum-based technologies. Decoherence poses a limit to the maximum time-window allowed to an experiment to faithfully achieve such desired states. This is of particular significance in critical systems, where the vanishing energy gap challenges an adiabatic ground state preparation. We show that a bang-bang protocol, consisting of a time evolution under two different values of an externally tunable parameter, allows for a high-fidelity ground state preparation in evolution times no longer than those required by the application of standard optimal control techniques, such as the chopped-random basis quantum optimization. In addition, owing to their reduced number of variables, such bang-bang protocols are very well suited to optimization purposes, reducing the increasing computational cost of other optimal control protocols. We benchmark the performance of such approach through two paradigmatic models, namely the Landau-Zener and the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model. Remarkably, the critical ground state of the latter model can be prepared with a high fidelity in a total evolution time that scales slower than the inverse of the vanishing energy gap.
We model the bang-bang optimization protocol as a shortcut to adiabaticity in the ground-state preparation of an ion-trap-based quantum simulator. Compared to a locally adiabatic evolution, the bang-bang protocol produces a somewhat lower ground-state probability, but its implementation is so much simpler than the locally adiabatic approach, that it remains an excellent choice to use for maximizing ground-state preparation in systems that cannot be solved with conventional computers. We describe how one can optimize the shortcut and provide specific details for how it can be implemented with c…
The implementation of static artificial magnetic fields in ultracold atomic systems has become a powerful tool, e.g. for simulating quantum-Hall physics with charge-neutral atoms. Taking an interacting bosonic flux ladder as a minimal model, we investigate protocols for adiabatic state preparation via magnetic flux ramps. Considering the fact that it is actually the artificial vector potential (in the form of Peierls phases) that can be experimentally engineered in optical lattices, rather than the magnetic field, we find that the time required for adiabatic state preparation dramatically depe…
We consider the use of feedback control during a measurement to increase the rate at which a single qubit is purified, and more generally the rate at which near-pure states may be prepared. We derive the optimal bang-bang algorithm for rapid state preparation from an initially completely mixed state when the measurement basis is unrestricted, and evaluate its performance numerically. We also consider briefly the case in which the measurement basis is fixed with respect to the state to be prepared, and describe the qualitative structure of the optimal bang-bang algorithm.
We experimentally demonstrate an ultrafast method for preparing spin states of donor-bound electrons in GaAs with single laser pulses. Each polarization state of a preparation pulse has a direct mapping onto a spin state, with bijective correspondence between the Poincaré-sphere (for photon polarization) and Bloch-sphere (for spin) state representations. The preparation is governed by a stimulated Raman process and occurs orders of magnitude faster than the spontaneous emission and spin dephasing. Similar dynamics governs our ultrafast optical Kerr detection of the spin coherence, thus getting…
Adaptable Route to Fast Coherent State Transport via Bang-Bang-Bang Protocols
Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica（中央研究院原子与分子科学研究所）；Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Physics, National Taiwan University（台湾大学物理系暨理论物理中心）；Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University（台湾大学量子科学与工程中心）；Trapped-Ion Quantum Computing Laboratory, Hon Hai Research Institute（鸿海研究院 trapped-ion 量子计算实验室）；Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences（国家理论科学中心物理组）
State preparation protocols ideally require as minimal operations as possible, in order to be implemented in near-term, potentially noisy quantum devices. Motivated by long range interactions (LRIs) intrinsic to many present-day experimental platforms (trapped ions, Rydberg atom arrays, etc.), we investigate the efficacy of variationally simulating non-trivial quantum states using the Variational Quantum-Classical Simulation (VQCS) protocol explored recently in [SciPost Phys. 6, 029 (2019)], in the presence of LRIs. We show that this approach leads to extremely efficient state preparation: for…
We consider the optimal control problem in a two-qubit system with bounded amplitude. Two cases are studied: quantum state preparation and entanglement creation. Cost functions, fidelity and concurrence, are optimized over bang-off controls for different values of the total duration, respectively. For quantum state preparation problem, three critical time points are determined with high precision, and optimal controls are obtained for different durations. A better estimation of the quantum speed limit is obtained, so is the time-optimal control. For entanglement creation problem, two critical …
We introduce a framework for the preparation, coherent manipulation and characterization of free-electron quantum states, experimentally demonstrating attosecond pulse trains for electron microscopy. Specifically, we employ phase-locked single-color and two-color optical fields to coherently control the electron wave function along the beam direction. We establish a new variant of quantum state tomography - "SQUIRRELS" - to reconstruct the density matrices of free-electron ensembles and their attosecond temporal structure. The ability to tailor and quantitatively map electron quantum states wi…
Ultrafast electron diffraction and time-resolved serial crystallography are the basis of the ongoing revolution in capturing at the atomic level of detail the structural dynamics of molecules. However, most experiments employ the classical "ball-and-stick" depictions, and the information of molecular quantum states, such as the density matrix, is missing. Here, we introduce a framework for the preparation and ultrafast coherent diffraction from rotational wave packets of molecules, and we establish a new variant of quantum state tomography for ultrafast electron diffraction to characterize the…
The ability to control and exploit quantum coherence and entanglement drives research across many fields ranging from ultra-cold quantum gases to spin systems in condensed matter. Transcending different physical systems, optical approaches have proven themselves to be particularly powerful, since they profit from the established toolbox of quantum optical techniques, are state-selective, contact-less and can be extremely fast. Here, we demonstrate how a precisely timed sequence of monochromatic ultrafast (~2-5 ps) optical pulses, with a well defined polarisation can be used to prepare arbitrar…
We present an in-depth analysis regarding the error resistance and optimization of our all-optical Bell measurement and ultrafast long-distance quantum communication scheme proposed in [arXiv:1503.06777]. In order to promote our previous proposal from loss- to fault-tolerance, we introduce a general and compact formalism that can also be applied to other related schemes (including non-all-optical ones such as [PRL 112, 250501]). With the help of this new representation we show that our communication protocol does not only counteract the inevitable photon loss during channel transmission, but i…
Robust biexciton preparation for entangled photon-pair generation by single-shot Floquet driving
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Universität Bayreuth（拜罗伊特大学）；Ruhr University Bochum（波鸿鲁尔大学）；Hangzhou City University（杭州城市学院）
Size-Limited Room Temperature Single-Photon Emission from Sidewall-Treated Fractional Dimension InGaN Quantum Dots: Determined by Density-of-States-Corrected Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics and Improved Signal-to-Noise Ratio
Non-Markovian effects in the evolution of open quantum systems have recently attracted widespread interest, particularly in the context of assessing the efficiency of energy and charge transfer in nanoscale biomolecular networks and quantum technologies. With the aid of many-body simulation methods, we uncover and analyse an ultrafast environmental process that causes energy relaxation in the reduced system to depend explicitly on the phase relation of the initial state preparation. Remarkably, for particular phases and system parameters, the net energy flow is uphill, transiently violating th…
The meaning of time asymmetry in quantum physics is discussed. On the basis of a mathematical theorem, the Stone--von Neumann theorem, the solutions of the dynamical equations, the Schrödinger equation (1) for states or the Heisenberg equation (6a) for observables are given by a unitary group. Dirac kets require the concept of a RHS (rigged Hilbert space) of Schwartz functions; for this kind of RHS a mathematical theorem also leads to time symmetric group evolution. Scattering theory suggests to distinguish mathematically between states (defined by a preparation apparatus) and observables (def…
