We describe a broad dynamical-algebraic framework for analyzing the quantum control properties of a set of naturally available interactions. General conditions under which universal control is achieved over a set of subspaces/subsystems are found. All known physical examples of universal control on subspaces/systems are related to the framework developed here.
When the environmental disturbace to a quantum system has a wavelength much larger than the system size, all qubits localized within a small area are under action of the same error operators. Noiseless subsystem and decoherence free subspace are known to correct such collective errors. We construct simple quantum circuits, which implement these collective error correction codes, for a small number $n$ of physical qubits. A single logical qubit is encoded with $n=3$ and $n=4$, while two logical qubits are encoded with $n=5$. The recursive relations among the subspaces employed in noiseless subs…
The existence of a decoherence-free subspace/subsystem (DFS) requires that the noise possesses a symmetry. In this work we consider noise models in which perturbations break this symmetry, so that the DFS for the unperturbed model experiences noise. We ask whether in this case there exist subspaces/subsystems that have less noise than the original DFS. We develop a numerical method to search for such minimal noise subsystems and apply it to a number of examples. For the examples we examine, we find that if the perturbation is local noise then there is no better subspace/subsystem than the orig…
Recent work on approximate quantum error correction (QEC) has opened up the possibility of constructing subspace codes that protect information with high fidelity in scenarios where perfect error correction is impossible. Motivated by this, we investigate the problem of approximate subsystem codes. Subsystem codes extend the standard formalism of subspace QEC to codes in which only a subsystem within a subspace of states is used to store information in a noise-resilient fashion. Here, we demonstrate easily checkable sufficient conditions for the existence of approximate subsystem codes. Furthe…
We investigate the most general notion of a private quantum code, which involves the encoding of qubits into quantum subsystems and subspaces. We contribute to the structure theory for private quantum codes by deriving testable conditions for private quantum subsystems in terms of Kraus operators for channels; establishing an analogue of the Knill-Laflamme conditions in this setting. For a large class of naturally arising quantum channels, we show that private subsystems can exist even in the absence of private subspaces. In doing so, we also discover the first examples of private subsystems t…
Quantum information requires protection from the adverse affects of decoherence and noise. This review provides an introduction to the theory of decoherence-free subspaces, noiseless subsystems, and dynamical decoupling. It addresses quantum information preservation as well protected computation.
Leakage is a particularly damaging error that occurs when a qubit state falls out of its two-level computational subspace. Compared to independent depolarizing noise, leaked qubits may produce many more configurations of harmful correlated errors during error-correction. In this work, we investigate different local codes in the low-error regime of a leakage gate error model. When restricting to bare-ancilla extraction, we observe that subsystem codes are good candidates for handling leakage, as their locality can limit damaging correlated errors. As a case study, we compare subspace surface co…
This paper addresses and expands on the contents of the recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 030502 (2013)] discussing private quantum subsystems. Here we prove several previously presented results, including a condition for a given random unitary channel to not have a private subspace (although this does not mean that private communication cannot occur, as was previously demonstrated via private subsystems) and algebraic conditions that characterize when a general quantum subsystem or subspace code is private for a quantum channel. These conditions can be regarded as the private analogue of t…
We generalize a recently discovered example of a private quantum subsystem to find private subsystems for Abelian subgroups of the $n$-qubit Pauli group, which exist in the absence of private subspaces. In doing so, we also connect these quantum privacy investigations with the theory of quasiorthogonal operator algebras through the use of tools from group theory and operator theory.
We describe exchange-only universal quantum computation and leakage reduction in the 3-qubit decoherence free subsystem (DFS). We discuss the angular momentum structure of the DFS, the proper forms for the DFS CNOT and leakage reduction operators in the total angular momentum basis, and new exchange-only pulse sequences for the CNOT and leakage reduction operators. Our new DFS CNOT sequence requires 22 pulses in 13 time steps. The DFS leakage reduction sequence, the first explicit leakage reduction sequence of its kind, requires 30 pulses in 20 time steps. Although the search for sequences was…
The dynamic of correlations in a system composed of a two-mode quantum field coupled with the environment is studied. The quantum field corresponds to two entangled coherent states whose amplitude we vary up to the mesoscopic regime. We show that under the onset of decoherence, correlations in the quantum field are not lost but transferred to the environment. We also found that sudden transitions in the decoherence regimes appear along with the dynamics depending on the coherent states' amplitude. Increasing the amplitude of the entangled coherence state results in the apparition of a metastab…
Decoherence-free subsystems have been successfully developed as a tool to preserve fragile quantum information against noises. In this letter, we develop a structure theory for decoherence-free subsystems. Based on it, we present an effective algorithm to construct a set of maximal decoherence-free subsystems in the sense that any other such subsystem is a subspace of one of them. As an application of these techniques in quantum many body systems, we propose a simple and numerically robust method to determine if two irreducible tensors are repeated, a key step in deciding if they are equivalen…
We introduce a generalized method of holonomic quantum computation (HQC) based on encoding in subsystems. As an application, we propose a scheme for applying holonomic gates to unencoded qubits by the use of a noisy ancillary qubit. This scheme does not require initialization in a subspace since all dynamical effects factor out as a transformation on the ancilla. We use this approach to show how fault-tolerant HQC can be realized via 2-local Hamiltonians with perturbative gadgets.
We present general conditions for quantum error suppression for Hamiltonian-based quantum computation using subsystem codes. This involves encoding the Hamiltonian performing the computation using an error detecting subsystem code and the addition of a penalty term that commutes with the encoded Hamiltonian. The scheme is general and includes the stabilizer formalism of both subspace and subsystem codes as special cases. We derive performance bounds and show that complete error suppression results in the large penalty limit. To illustrate the power of subsystem-based error suppression, we intr…
There are many ways to decompose the Hilbert space H of a composite quantum system into tensor product subspaces. Different subsystem decompositions generally imply different interaction Hamiltonians V, and therefore different expectation values for subsystem observables. This means that thE uniqueness of physical predictions is not guaranteed, despite the uniqueness of the total Hamiltonian H and the total Hilbert space. Here we use Clausius' version of the second law of thermodynamics (CSL) and standard identifications of thermodynamic quantities to identify possible subsystem decompositions…
We put forward a simple construction of genuinely entangled subspaces -- subspaces supporting only genuinely multipartite entangled states -- of any permissible dimensionality for any number of parties and local dimensions. The method uses nonorthogonal product bases, which are built from totally nonsingular matrices with a certain structure. We give an explicit basis for the constructed subspaces. An immediate consequence of our result is the possibility of constructing in the general multiparty scenario genuinely multiparty entangled mixed states with ranks up to the maximal dimension of a g…
Quantum discord-breaking channels were previously defined as the local channels that act on subsystem $A$ to produce classical-quantum states across system $AB$. However, unlike entanglement, discord is asymmetric. Here, we characterise the discord-breaking channels that act on subsystem $B$, thus completing the overall description of discord-breaking channels. We then introduce the notion of discord-annihilating channels, which act globally on system $AB$ to destroy quantum discord, and find their closed form. Discord-annihilating channels have clear operational description, involving subspac…
A permutation-invariant quantum code on $N$ qudits is any subspace stabilized by the matrix representation of the symmetric group $S_N$ as permutation matrices that permute the underlying $N$ subsystems. When each subsystem is a complex Euclidean space of dimension $q \ge 2$, any permutation-invariant code is a subspace of the symmetric subspace of $(\mathbb C^q)^N.$ We give an algebraic construction of new families of of $d$-dimensional permutation-invariant codes on at least $(2t+1)^2(d-1)$ qudits that can also correct $t$ errors for $d \ge 2$. The construction of our codes relies on a real …
Codeword stabilized quantum codes provide a unified approach to constructing quantum error-correcting codes, including both additive and non-additive quantum codes. Standard codeword stabilized quantum codes encode quantum information into subspaces. The more general notion of encoding quantum information into a subsystem is known as an operator (or subsystem) quantum error correcting code. Most operator codes studied to date are based in the usual stabilizer formalism. We introduce operator quantum codes based on the codeword stabilized quantum code framework. Based on the necessary and suffi…
A cavity QED implementation of the non-adiabatic holonomic quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces is proposed with nitrogen-vacancy centers coupled commonly to the whispering-gallery mode of a microsphere cavity, where a universal set of quantum gates can be realized on the qubits. In our implementation, with the assistant of the appropriate driving fields, the quantum evolution is insensitive to the cavity field state, which is only virtually excited. The implemented non-adiabatic holonomies, utilizing optical transitions in the Λ type of three-level configuration of the nitrogen-v…
Universal quantum computation is usually associated with interaction among two-level quantum subsystems, as this interaction is commonly viewed as a necessity to achieve universal quantum computation. In this work, we show that, contrary to this intuition, universal quantum computation can be achieved without interaction among initially independent two-level quantum subsystems. We call it counterfactual universal quantum computation. As special cases, we show how to achieve counterfactual communication of quantum states, counterfactual quantum swapping, and counterfactual quantum erasure codes…
We present a new scheme to perform noise resilient universal adiabatic quantum computation using two-body interactions. To achieve this, we introduce a new family of error detecting subsystem codes whose gauge generators and a set of their logical operators - capable of encoding universal Hamiltonian computations - can be implemented using two-body interactions. Logical operators of the code are used to encode any given computational Hamiltonian, and the gauge operators are used to construct a penalty Hamiltonian whose ground subspace is protected against local-errors. In contrast to previous …
We unify two recent results concerning equilibration in quantum theory. We first generalise a proof of Reimann [PRL 101,190403 (2008)], that the expectation value of 'realistic' quantum observables will equilibrate under very general conditions, and discuss its implications for the equilibration of quantum systems. We then use this to re-derive an independent result of Linden et. al. [PRE 79, 061103 (2009)], showing that small subsystems generically evolve to an approximately static equilibrium state. Finally, we consider subspaces in which all initial states effectively equilibrate to the sam…
Permutation symmetries of multipartite quantum states are defined only when the constituent subsystems are of equal dimensions. In this work we extend this notion of permutation symmetry to heterogeneous systems, that is, systems composed of subsystems having unequal dimensions. Given a tensor product space of $k$ subsystems (of arbitrary dimensions) and a permutation operation $σ$ over $k$ symbols, these states are such that they have identical decompositions (up to an overall phase) in the given tensor product space and the tensor product space obtained by the permuting the subsystems by $σ$…
The interaction of quantum emitters with one-dimensional photon-like reservoirs induces strong and long-range dissipative couplings that give rise to the emergence of so-called Decoherence Free Subspaces (DFS) which are decoupled from dissipation. When introducing weak perturbations on the emitters, e.g., driving, the strong collective dissipation enforces an effective coherent evolution within the DFS. In this work, we show explicitly how by introducing single-site resolved drivings, we can use the effective dynamics within the DFS to design a universal set of one and two-qubit gates within t…
The ultimate precision of any measurement of the temperature of a quantum system is the inverse of the local quantum thermal susceptibility [De Pasquale et al., Nature Communications 7, 12782 (2016)] of the subsystem with whom the thermometer interacts. If this subsystem can be described with the canonical ensemble, such quantity reduces to the variance of the local Hamiltonian, that is proportional to the heat capacity of the subsystem. However, the canonical ensemble might not apply in the presence of interactions between the subsystem and the rest of the system. In this work we address this…
A fundamental requirement of quantum information processing is the protection from the adverse effects of decoherence and noise. Decoherence-free subspaces and geometric processing are important steps of quantum information protection. Here, we provide a new experimentally feasible scheme to combine decoherence-free subspaces with nonadiabatic geometric manipulations to attain a universal quantum computation. The proposed scheme is different from previous proposals and is based on the typical XY interaction coupling, which can be set up in various nano-engineered systems and therefore open up …
