Two-level ionic systems, where quantum information is encoded in long lived states (qubits), are discussed extensively for quantum information processing. We present a collection of measurements which characterize the stability of a qubit based on the $S_{1/2}$--$D_{5/2}$ transition of single $^{40}$Ca$^+$ ions in a linear Paul trap. We find coherence times of $\simeq$1 ms, discuss the main technical limitations and outline possible improvements.
Owing to their long excited state lifetimes, rare-earth ions in crystals are widely used in quantum applications. To allow optical readout of the qubit state of individual ions, we propose to dope the crystal with an additional nearby ancilla ion with a shorter radiative lifetime. We show how a Bayesian analysis exhausts the information about the state of the qubit from the optical signal of the ancilla ion. We study the effects of incoherent processes and propose ways to reduce their effect on the readout. Finally, we extend the architecture to ions residing in two remote cavities, and we sho…
Coherent operations constitutive for the implementation of single and multi-qubit quantum gates with trapped ions are demonstrated that are robust against variations in experimental parameters and intrinsically indeterministic system parameters. In particular, pulses developed using optimal control theory are demonstrated for the first time with trapped ions. Their performance as a function of error parameters is systematically investigated and compared to composite pulses.
Dynamical decoupling techniques are the method of choice for increasing gate fidelities. While these methods have produced very impressive results in terms of decreasing local noise and increasing the fidelities of single qubit operations, dealing with the noise of two qubit gates has proven more challenging. The main obstacle is that the noise time scale is shorter than the two qubit gate itself so that refocusing methods do not work. We present a measurement and feedback based method to refocus two qubit gates which cannot be refocused by conventional methods. We analyze in detail this metho…
We show how to construct a multi-qubit control gate on a quantum register of an arbitrary size N. This gate performs a single-qubit operation on a specific qubit conditioned by the state of other N-1 qubits. We provide an algorithm how to build up an array of networks consisting of single-qubit rotations and multi-qubit control-NOT gates for the synthesis of an arbitrary entangled quantum state of N qubits. We illustrate the algorithm on a system of cold trapped ions. This example illuminates the efficiency of the direct implementation of the multi-qubit CNOT gate compared to its decomposition…
We present a scheme for robust and efficient projection measurement of a qubit consisting of the two magnetic sublevels in the electronic ground state of alkali earth metal ions. The scheme is based on two stimulated Raman adiabatic passages (STIRAP) involving four partially coherent laser fields. We show how the efficiency depends on experimentally relevant parameters: Rabi frequencies, pulse widths, laser linewidths, one- and two-photon detunings, residual laser power, laser polarization and ion motion.
We present a method of generating collective multi-qubit entanglement via global addressing of an ion chain following the guidelines of the Tavis-Cummings model, where several qubits are coupled to a collective motional mode. We show that a wide family of Dicke states and irradiant states can be generated by single global laser pulses, unitarily or helped with suitable postselection techniques.
Quantum coherence and entanglement orignate from the superposition principle. We derive a rigorous relation between the ${l_1}$-norm of coherence and concurrence, in that we show that the former is always greater than the latter. This result highlights the hierarchical relationship between coherence and concurrence, and proves coherence to be a fundamental and ubiquitous resource. We derive an analogous form of monogamy inequality which is based on the partial coherence of the reduced two-qubit and reduced single qubit of the particular class of three-qubit state. Moreover, we provide coherenc…
The influence of the initial preparation on dephasing in open quantum dynamics is studied using an exactly solvable model of a two-level system (qubit) interacting with a bosonic bath. It is found that for some classes of non-selective preparation measurements, qubit-bath correlations lead to a significant enhancement of coherence in the qubit at the initial stage of evolution. The time behavior of the qubit purity and entropy in the regime of enhancement of coherence is considered for different temperatures and coupling strengths.
Recently, a basis-invariant measure of coherence known as the intrinsic degree of coherence has been established for classical and single-particle quantum states [JOSA B {\bf 36}, 2765 (2019)]. Using the same mathematical construction, in this article, we define the intrinsic degree of coherence of two-qubit states and demonstrate its usefulness in quantifying two-particle quantum correlations and entanglement. In this context, first of all, we show that the intrinsic degree of coherence of a two-qubit state puts an upper bound on the violations of Bell inequalities that can be achieved with t…
The proposal for quantum computing with rare-earth-ion qubits in inorganic crystals makes use of the inhomogeneous broadening of optical transitions in the ions to associate individual qubits with ions responding to radiation in selected frequency channels. We show that a class of Gaussian composite pulses and complex sech pulses provide accurate qubit pi-rotations, which are at the same time channel selective on a 5 MHz frequency scale and tolerant to 0.5 MHz deviations of the transition frequency of ions within a single channel. Rotations in qubit space of arbitrary angles and phases are pro…
We demonstrate experimentally a robust quantum memory using a magnetic-field-independent hyperfine transition in 9Be+ atomic ion qubits at a magnetic field B ~= 0.01194 T. We observe that the single physical qubit memory coherence time is greater than 10 seconds, an improvement of approximately five orders of magnitude from previous experiments with 9Be+. We also observe long coherence times of decoherence-free subspace logical qubits comprising two entangled physical qubits and discuss the merits of each type of qubit.
We investigate the single qubit transformations under several typical coherence-free operations, such as, incoherent operation (IO), strictly incoherent operation (SIO), physically incoherent operation (PIO), and coherence preserving operation (CPO). Quantitative connection has been built between IO and SIO in single qubit systems. Moreover, these coherence-free operations have a clear hierarchical relationship in single qubit systems: CPO $\subset$ PIO $\subset$ SIO=IO. A new and explicit proof for the necessary and sufficient condition of single qubit transformation via IO or SIO has been pr…
The resource theory of coherence studies the operational value of superpositions in quantum technologies. A key question in this theory concerns the efficiency of manipulation and interconversion of this resource. Here we solve this question completely for mixed states of qubits by determining the optimal probabilities for mixed state conversions via stochastic incoherent operations. This implies new lower bounds on the asymptotic state conversion rate between mixed single-qubit states which in some cases is proven to be tight. Furthermore, we obtain the minimal distillable coherence for given…
We propose scalable architectures for the coherence-preserving qubits introduced by Bacon, Brown, and Whaley [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 247902 (2001)]. These architectures employ extra qubits providing additional degrees of freedom to the system. We show that these extra degrees of freedom can be used to counter errors in coupling strength within the coherence-preserving qubit and to combat interactions with environmental qubits. The presented architectures incorporate experimentally viable methods for inter-logical-qubit coupling and can implement a controlled phase gate via three simultaneo…
In this paper, we investigate preservation of quantum coherence of a single-qubit interacting with a zero-temperature thermal reservoir through the addition of noninteracting qubits in the reservoir. Moreover, we extend this scheme to preserve quantum entanglement between two and three distant qubits, each of which interacts with a dissipative reservoir independently. At the long time limit, we obtained analytical expressions for the coherence measure and the concurrence of two and three qubits in terms of the number of additional qubits. It is observed that, by increasing the number of additi…
Quantum coherence and quantum entanglement are two strong pillars in quantum information theory. We study here for the possibility of any connection between these two important aspects of quantum mechanics while studying the entanglement detection problem for the detection of bipartite higher dimensional entangled states and multipartite entangled states. To achieve our goal, we derive the lower bound $L$ of $l_{1}$ norm of coherence of bipartite qubit-qudit system using the criterion that detect entanglement. Furthermore, we deduce the upper bound $U$ of $l_{1}$ norm of coherence of separable…
We investigate the dynamics of coherence and entanglement of vibrating qubits. Firstly, we consider a single trapped ion qubit inside a perfect cavity and successively we use it to construct a bipartite system made of two of such subsystems, taken identical and noninteracting. As a general result, we find that qubit vibration can lead to prolonging initial coherence in both single-qubit and two-qubit system. However, despite of this coherence preservation, we show that the decay of the entanglement between the two qubits is sped up by the vibrational motion of the qubits. Furthermore, we highl…
We describe a method for creating small quantum processors in a crystal stoichiometric in an optically active rare earth ion. The crystal is doped with another rare earth, creating an ensemble of identical clusters of surrounding ions, whose optical and hyperfine frequencies are uniquely determined by their spatial position in the cluster. Ensembles of ions in each unique position around the dopant serve as qubits, with strong local interactions between ions in different qubits. These ensemble qubits can each be used as a quantum memory for light, and we show how the interactions between qubit…
We demonstrate sympathetic cooling of a 43Ca+ trapped-ion "memory" qubit by a 40Ca+ "coolant" ion near the ground state of both axial motional modes, whilst maintaining coherence of the qubit. This is an essential ingredient in trapped-ion quantum computers. The isotope shifts are sufficient to suppress decoherence and phase shifts of the memory qubit due to the cooling light which illuminates both ions. We measure the qubit coherence during 10 cycles of sideband cooling, finding a coherence loss of 3.3% per cooling cycle. The natural limit of the method is O(0.01%) infidelity per cooling cycl…
We study the influence of an external driving field on the coherence properties of a qubit under the influence of bit-flip noise. In the presence of driving, two paradigmatic cases are considered: (i) a field that results for a suitable choice of the parameters in so-called coherent destruction of tunneling and (ii) one that commutes with the static qubit Hamiltonian. In each case, we give for high-frequency driving a lower bound for the coherence time. This reveals the conditions under which the external fields can be used for coherence stabilization.
Praseodymium (Pr$^{3+}$) ions doped in the site 1 of yttrium orthosilicate (Y$_2$SiO$_5$) has been widely employed as the photonic quantum memory due to their excellent optical coherence and spin coherence. While praseodymium ions occupying the site 2 in Y$_2$SiO$_5$ crystal have better optical coherence as compared with those at site 1, which may enable better performance in quantum memory. Here we experimentally characterize the hyperfine interactions of the ground state $^3$H$_4$ and excited state $^1$D$_2$ of Pr$^{3+}$ at site 2 in Y$_2$SiO$_5$ using Raman heterodyne detected nuclear magne…
We study the interplay between coherence trapping, information back-flow and the form of the reservoir spectral density for dephasing qubits. We show that stationary coherence is maximized when the qubit undergoes non-Markovian dynamics, and we elucidate the different roles played by the low and high frequency parts of the environmental spectrum. We show that the low frequencies fully determine the presence or absence of information back-flow while the high frequencies dictate the maximal amount of coherence trapping.
The effects of the measurement apparatus on quantum coherence are studied by considering a purely dephasing model of a qubit. The initial state is prepared from a thermal state of the whole system by performing a nonselective measurement on the qubit. The magnitude of the initial postmeasurement coherence is bounded by the value $1/2$, which is realized with special measurement schemes and in the low-temperature limit. The magnitude of coherence identically vanishes, increases or decreases with approximately constant velocity over a determined short time scale, according to the choice of the p…
We report on the implementation of quantum state tomography for an ensemble of Eu$^{3+}$ dopant ions in a \YSO crystal. The tomography was applied to a qubit based on one of the ion's optical transitions. The qubit was manipulated using optical pulses and measurements were made by observing the optical free induction in a phase sensitive manner. Fidelities of $>90$% for the combined preparation and measurement process were achieved. Interactions between the ions due to the change in the ions' permanent electric dipole moment when excited optically were also measured. In light of these results,…
We collect the fluorescence from two trapped atomic ions, and measure quantum interference between photons emitted from the ions. The interference of two photons is a crucial component of schemes to entangle atomic qubits based on a photonic coupling. The ability to preserve the generated entanglement and to repeat the experiment with the same ions is necessary to implement entangling quantum gates between atomic qubits, and allows the implementation of protocols to efficiently scale to larger numbers of atomic qubits.
Amplitude noise which inflicts a random two qubit term is one of the main obstacles preventing the implementation of a high fidelity two-body gate below the fault tolerance threshold. This noise is difficult to refocus as any refocusing technique could only tackle noise with frequency below the operation rate. Since the two qubit gate speed is normally the slowest rate in the system, it constitutes the last bottleneck towards an implementation of a gate below the fault tolerant threshold. Here we propose to use composite pulses as a dynamical decoupling approach, in order to reduce two qubit g…
We study the coherence trapping of a qubit correlated initially with a non-Markovian bath in a pure dephasing channel. By considering the initial qubit-bath correlation and the bath spectral density, we find that the initial qubit-bath correlation can lead to a more efficient coherence trapping than that of the initially separable qubit-bath state. The stationary coherence in the long time limit can be maximized by optimizing the parameters of the initially correlated qubit-bath state and the bath spectral density. In addition, the effects of this initial correlation on the maximal evolution s…
We report the realization of an elementary quantum processor based on a linear crystal of trapped ions. Each ion serves as a quantum bit (qubit) to store the quantum information in long lived electronic states. We present the realization of single-qubit and of universal two-qubit logic gates. The qwo-qubit operation relies on the coupling of the ions through their collective quantized motion. A detailed description of the setup and the methods is included.
We propose a pulsed dynamical decoupling protocol as the generator of tunable, fast, and robust quantum phase gates between two microwave-driven trapped ion hyperfine qubits. The protocol consists of sequences of $π$-pulses acting on ions that are oriented along an externally applied magnetic field gradient. In contrast to existing approaches, in our design the two vibrational modes of the ion chain cooperate under the influence of the external microwave driving to achieve significantly increased gate speeds. Our scheme is robust against the dominant noise sources, which are errors on the magn…
Using the axiomatic definition of the coherence measure, such as the $l_{1}$ norm and the relative entropy, we study the phenomena of two-qubit system quantum coherence through quantum channels where successive uses of the channels are memory. Different types of noisy channels with memory, such as amplitude damping, phase-damping, and depolarizing channels effect on quantum coherence have been discussed in detail. The results show that, quantum channels with memory can efficiently protect coherence from noisy channels. Particularly, as channels with perfect memory, quantum coherence is unaffec…
We consider the problem of stabilizing the coherence of a single qubit subject to Markovian decoherence, via the application of a control Hamiltonian, without any additional resources. In this case neither quantum error correction/avoidance, nor dynamical decoupling applies. We show that using tracking-control, i.e., the conditioning of the control field on the state of the qubit, it is possible to maintain coherence for finite time durations, until the control field diverges.
We show how the dispersive regime of the Jaynes-Cummings model may serve as a valuable tool to the study of open quantum systems. We employ it in a bottom-up approach to build an environment that preserves qubit energy and induces varied coherence dynamics. We then present the derivation of a compact expression for the qubit coherence, applied here to the case of a finite number of thermally populated modes in the environment. We also discuss how the model parameters can be adjusted to facilitate the production of short-time monotonic decay (STMD) of the qubit coherence. Our results provide a …
Entanglement is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon and thus it has no classical analog. On the other hand, coherence is a well-known phenomenon in classical optics and in quantum mechanics. Recent research shows that quantum coherence may act as a useful resource in quantum information theory. We will employ here quantum coherence to detect and classify the entanglement property of three-qubit states. Moreover, we have shown that if any three-qubit state violates another necessary condition for the detection of a general biseparable state then the given three-qubit state cannot be a bisepa…
We report a superconducting artificial atom with an observed quantum coherence time of T2*=95us and energy relaxation time T1=70us. The system consists of a single Josephson junction transmon qubit embedded in an otherwise empty copper waveguide cavity whose lowest eigenmode is dispersively coupled to the qubit transition. We attribute the factor of four increase in the coherence quality factor relative to previous reports to device modifications aimed at reducing qubit dephasing from residual cavity photons. This simple device holds great promise as a robust and easily produced artificial qua…
The identification of spacial noise correlation is of critical importance in developing error-corrected quantum devices, but it has barely been studied so far. In this work, we utilize an effective new method called qubit motion, to efficiently determine the noise correlations between any pair of qubits in a 7-qubit superconducting quantum system. The noise correlations between the same pairs of qubits are also investigated when the qubits are at distinct operating frequencies. What's more, in this multi-qubit system with the presence of noise correlations, we demonstrate the enhancing effect …
I present a general scheme through which the evidence of a superposition involving distinct classical-like states of a macroscopic system can be probed. The scheme relies on a qubit being coupled to a macroscopic harmonic oscillator in such a way that it can be used to both prepare and probe a macroscopic superposition. Two potentially realizable implementations, one with a flux qubit coupled to a LC circuit, and the other with an ion-trap qubit coupled to the collective motion of several ions, are proposed.
We report the creation of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with up to 14 qubits. By investigating the coherence of up to 8 ions over time, we observe a decay proportional to the square of the number of qubits. The observed decay agrees with a theoretical model which assumes a system affected by correlated, Gaussian phase noise. This model holds for the majority of current experimental systems developed towards quantum computation and quantum metrology.
Coherence and entanglement are the two most crucial resources for various quantum information processing tasks. Here, we study the interplay of coherence and entanglement under the action of different three qubit quantum cloning operations. Considering certain well-known quantum cloning machines (input state independent and dependent), we provide examples of coherent and incoherent operations performed by them. We show that both the output entanglement and coherence could vanish under incoherent cloning operations. Coherent cloning operations on the other hand, could be used to construct a uni…
Quantum coherence, the ability of a quantum system to be in a superposition of orthogonal quantum states, is a distinct feature of the quantum mechanics, thus marking a deviation from classical physics. Coherence finds its applications in quantum sensing and metrology, quantum thermodynamics and computation. A particularly interesting is the possibility to observe coherence arising in counter-intuitive way from thermal energy that is without implementation of intricate protocols involving coherent driving sequences. In this manuscript, we investigate quantum coherence emerging in a hybrid syst…
We study the physical implementation of an optimal tomographic reconstruction scheme for the case of determining the state of a multi-qubit system, where trapped ions are used for defining qubits. The protocol is based on the use of mutually unbiased measurements and on the physical information described in H. Häffner \emph{et. al} [Nature \textbf{438}, 643-646 (2005)]. We introduce the concept of physical complexity for different types of unbiased measurements and analyze their generation in terms of one and two qubit gates for trapped ions.
Superconducting qubits are a promising platform for building a larger-scale quantum processor capable of solving otherwise intractable problems. In order for the processor to reach practical viability, the gate errors need to be further suppressed and remain stable for extended periods of time. With recent advances in qubit control, both single- and two-qubit gate fidelities are now in many cases limited by the coherence times of the qubits. Here we experimentally employ closed-loop feedback to stabilize the frequency fluctuations of a superconducting transmon qubit, thereby increasing its coh…
Due to their potential for long coherence times, dopant ions have long been considered promising candidates for scalable solid state quantum computing. However, the demonstration of two qubit operation has proven to be problematic, largely due to the difficulty of addressing closely spaced ions. Here we use optically active ions and optical frequency addressing to demonstrate a conditional phase shift between two qubits.
In this paper, we analyze the evolution of quantum coherence in a two-qubit system going through the amplitude damping channel. After they have gone through this channel many times, we analyze the systems with respect to the coherence of their output states. When only one subsystem goes through the channel, frozen coherence occurs if and only if this subsystem is incoherent and an auxiliary condition is satisfied for the other subsystem. When two subsystems go through this quantum channel, quantum coherence can be frozen if and only if the two subsystems are both incoherent. We also investigat…
We report the implementation of a perceptron quantum gate in an ion-trap quantum computer. In this scheme, a perceptron's target qubit changes its state depending on the interactions with several qubits. The target qubit displays a tunable sigmoid switching behaviour becoming a universal approximator when nested with other percetrons. The procedure consists on the adiabatic ramp-down of a dressing-field applied to the target qubit. We also use two successive perceptron quantum gates to implement a XNOR-gate, where the perceptron qubit changes its state only when the parity of two input qubits …
It is shown that quantum coherence is conserved in a principal system in the case that the system is coupled to a fast dissipating environment [arXiv:0709.0562]. The phenomenon is called the quantum wipe effect. Here, this effect is reviewed and the analytical proof for a model system consisting of a one-qubit system coupled to a fast dissipating environment is extended to an environment at a thermal equilibrium.
We consider quantum gates for trapped ions using state-selective displacement of the ions. We generalize earlier work in order to treat arbitrary separations between the traps. This requires the impact of anharmonicity arising from the Coulomb interaction to be estimated. We show that its effects are always small enough to allow high fidelity. In particular, the method can be applied to two ions in the same trap. We also show that gates between non-neighbour ions, and hence a Toffoli (three-qubit controlled-NOT) gate, can be achieved. We discuss how the gate can be applied to logical qubits en…
Decoherence, resulting from unwanted interaction between a qubit and its environment, poses a serious challenge towards the development of quantum technologies. Recently, researchers have started analysing how real-time Hamiltonian learning approaches, based on estimating the qubit state faster than the environmental fluctuations, can be used to counteract decoherence. In this work, we investigate how the back-action of the quantum measurements used in the learning process can be harnessed to extend qubit coherence. We propose an adaptive protocol that, by learning the qubit environment, narro…
Do experiments based on superconducting loops segmented with Josephson junctions (e.g., flux qubits) show macroscopic quantum behavior in the sense of Schrödinger's cat example? Various arguments based on microscopic and phenomenological models were recently adduced in this debate. We approach this problem by adapting (to flux qubits) the framework of large-scale quantum coherence, which was already successfully applied to spin ensembles and photonic systems. We show that contemporary experiments might show quantum coherence more than 100 times larger than experiments in the classical regime. …
We propose a potentially practical scheme for realization of an n-qubit (n>2) conditional phase flip (CPF) gate and implementation of Grover search algorithm in the ion-trap system. We demonstrate both analytically and numerically that, our scheme could be achieved efficiently to find a marked state with high fidelity and high success probability. We also show the merits of the proposal that the increase of the ion number can improve the fidelity and the success probability of the CPF gate. The required operations for Grover search are very close to the capabilities of current ion-trap techniq…
A proposal for a phase gate and a Mølmer-Sørensen (MS) gate in the dressed state basis is presented. In order to perform the multi-qubit interaction, a strong magnetic field gradient is required to couple the phonon-bus to the qubit states. The gate is performed using resonant microwave driving fields together with either a radio-frequency (RF) driving field, or additional detuned microwave driving fields. The gate is robust to ambient magnetic field fluctuations due to an applied resonant microwave driving field. Furthermore, the gate is robust to fluctuations in the microwave Rabi frequency …
Optically addressable spins are a promising platform for quantum information science due to their combination of a long-lived qubit with a spin-optical interface for external qubit control and read out. The ability to chemically synthesize such systems - to generate optically addressable molecular spins - offers a modular qubit architecture which can be transported across different environments, and atomistically tailored for targeted applications through bottom-up design and synthesis. Here we demonstrate how the spin coherence in such optically addressable molecular qubits can be controlled …
