The pulse control of decoherence in a qubit interacting with a quantum environment is studied with focus on a general case where decoherence is induced by both pure dephasing and population decay. To observe how the decoherence is suppressed by periodic pi pulses, we present a simple method to calculate the time evolution of a qubit under arbitrary pulse sequences consisting of bit-flips and/or phase-flips. We examine the effectiveness of the two typical sequences: bb sequence consisting of only bit-flips, and bp sequence consisting of both bit- and phase-flips. It is shown that the effectiveness of the pulse sequences depends on a relative strength of the two decoherence processes especially when a pulse interval is slightly shorter than qubit-environment correlation times. In the short-interval limit, however, the bp sequence is always more effective than, or at least as effective as, the bb sequence.
We present a new strategy for multipulse control over decoherence. When a two-level system interacts with a reservoir characterized by a specific frequency, we find that the decoherence is effectively suppressed by synchronizing the pulse-train application with the dynamical motion of the reservoir.
We consider the effect of broadband decoherence on the performance of refocusing sequences, having in mind applications of dynamical decoupling in concatenation with quantum error correcting codes as the first stage of coherence protection. Specifically, we construct cumulant expansions of effective decoherence operators for a qubit driven by a pulse of a generic symmetric shape, and for several sequences of $π$- and $π/2$-pulses. While, in general, the performance of soft pulses in decoupling sequences in the presence of Markovian decoherence is worse than that of the ideal $δ$-pulses, it can…
Using a microscopic master equation to account for the environmental effects, we compute the decoherence culminated during the propagation of a microwave pulse of arbitrary shape through a superconducting qubit. It is shown that the qubit decoherence vanishes and the pulse shape remains absorption-free when the latter adopts a soliton shape with $nπ$ area. Otherwise, the environmental feedback decelerates the velocity of the soliton envelop and induces an monotonic increase of phase in the microwave. A pulse of non-$nπ$ area thus ramifies into a transparent part that travels decoherence-free a…
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 study three methods of obtaining an approximation of unitary evolution of a quantum system under decoherence. We use three methods of optimizing the control pulses: genetic optimization, approximate evolution method and approximate gradient method. To model the noise in the system we use the Lindblad equaiton. We obtain results showing that genetic optimization may give a better approximation of a unitary evolution in the case of high noise.
We report on the application of a dynamic decoherence control pulse sequence on a nuclear quadrupole transition in $Pr^{3+}:Y_2SiO_5$ . Process tomography is used to analyse the effect of the pulse sequence. The pulse sequence was found to increase the decoherence time of the transition to over 30 seconds. Although the decoherence time was significantly increased, the population terms were found to rapidly decay on the application of the pulse sequence. The increase of this decay rate is attributed to inhomogeneity in the ensemble. Methods to circumvent this limit are discussed.
A decoherence-free subspace (DFS) isolates quantum information from deleterious environmental interactions. We give explicit sequences of strong and fast (``bang-bang'', BB) pulses that create the conditions allowing for the existence of DFSs that support scalable, universal quantum computation. One such example is the creation of the conditions for collective decoherence, wherein all system particles are coupled in an identical manner to their environment. The BB pulses needed for this are generated using only the Heisenberg exchange interaction. In conjunction with previous results, this sho…
We show how it is possible to suppress decoherence using tailored external forcing acting as pulses. In the limit of infinitely frequent pulses decoherence and dissipation are completely frozen; however, a significant decoherence suppression is already obtained when the frequency of the pulses is of the order of the reservoir typical frequency scale. This method could be useful in particular to suppress the decoherence of the center-of-mass motion in ion traps.
We present a scheme to implement a universal set of quantum gates based on achievable interactions, and the gates can be protected against decoherences through dynamical-decoupling approach without encoding. By properly designing system evolutions, the desired system interactions commute with the elements forming dynamical decoupling pulses. Thus, the effect of decoherences can be eliminated by repeatedly applying the pulses, without noticeably affecting the system evolutions governed by the desired system interactions given small enough time interval between pulses. Moreover, due to the commu…
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.
It is shown that the magnetic state decoherence produced by collisions in a thermal vapor can be suppressed by the application of a train of ultrafast optical pulses.
We study distribution schemes for a polarization entangled photon pair based on a decoherence-free subspace over lossy quantum channels and propose an efficient scheme that is robust against not only collective phase noises but also general collective noises for two qubits. While the proposed scheme employs two photons to build the decoherence-free subspace, the success probability is proportional to the channel transmittance of a single photon with the aid of a counter-propagating weak coherent light pulse. The key ingredient in the scheme is found to be the reciprocity of the channel. The pr…
Optimal Control of Spin Qudits Subject to Decoherence Using Amplitude-and-Frequency-Constrained Pulses
Universidad de Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学）；Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA), CSIC-Universidad de Zaragoza（阿拉贡纳米科学与材料研究所（INMA），西班牙国家研究委员会-萨拉戈萨大学）；ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Universidad de Valladolid（巴利亚多利德大学）；Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI) of the University of Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学生物计算与复杂系统物理研究所（BIFI））
We develop a theory to analyze the decoherence effect in a charged qubit array system with photon echo signals in the multiwave mixing configuration. We present how the decoherence suppression effect by the {\it bang-bang} control with the $π$ pulses can be demonstrated in laboratory by using a bulk ensemble of exciton qubits and optical pulses whose pulse area is even smaller than $π$. Analysis is made on the time-integated multiwave mixing signals diffracted into certain phase matching directions from a bulk ensemble. Depending on the pulse interval conditions, the cross over from the decohe…
We propose a scheme for slowing down decay into a continuum. We make use of a sequence of ultrashort $2π$-pulses applied on an auxiliary transition of the system so that there is a destructive interference between the two transition amplitudes - one before the application of the pulse and the other after the application of the pulse. We give explicit results for a structured continuum. Our scheme can also inhibit unwanted transitions.
In this work, two experimentally feasible methods of decoherence engineering-one based on the application of stochastic classical kicks and the other based on temporally randomized pulse sequences are combined. A different coupling interaction is proposed, which leads to amplitude damping as compared to existing methods which model phase damping, utilizing the $zz$ coupling interaction. The decoherence process on combining the stochastic kick method and the randomized pulse sequence method and the effectiveness of dynamical decoupling under these coupling interactions are analyzed. Finally, a …
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…
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.
A technique to measure the decoherence time of optical phonons in a solid is presented. Phonons are excited with a pair of time delayed 80 fs, near infrared pulses via spontaneous, transient Raman scattering. The fringe visibility of the resulting Stokes pulse pair, as a function of time delay, is used to measure the phonon dephasing time. The method avoids the need to use either narrow band or few femtosecond pulses and is useful for low phonon excitations. The dephasing time of phonons created in bulk diamond is measured to be tau = 6.8ps (1.56cm-1).
A particular superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID)qubit, indicated as double SQUID qubit, can be manipulated by rapidly modifying its potential with the application of fast flux pulses. In this system we observe coherent oscillations exhibiting non-exponential decay, indicating a non trivial decoherence mechanism. Moreover, by tuning the qubit in different conditions (different oscillation frequencies) by changing the pulse height, we observe a crossover between two distinct decoherence regimes and the existence of an "optimal" point where the qubit is only weakly sensitive to in…
Reducing decoherence is an essential step toward realizing general-purpose quantum computers beyond the present noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers. To this end, dynamical decoupling (DD) approaches in which external fields are applied to qubits are often adopted. We numerically study DD using a two-level model system (qubit) under the influence of Markovian decoherence by using quantum optimal control theory with slightly modified settings, in which the physical objective is to maximally create and maintain a specified superposition state in a specified control period. An optima…
In the propagation of optical pulses through dispersive media, the frequency degree of freedom acts as an effective decohering environment on the polarization state of the pulse. Here we discuss the application of open-loop dynamical-decoupling techniques for suppressing such a polarization decoherence in one-way communication channels. We describe in detail the experimental proof of principle of the "bang-bang" protection technique recently applied to flying qubits in [Damodarakurup et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 040502]. Bang-bang operations are implemented through appropriately oriented wave…
The Uhrig dynamical decoupling sequence achieves high-order decoupling of a single system qubit from its dephasing bath through the use of bang-bang Pauli pulses at appropriately timed intervals. High-order decoupling of single and multiple qubit systems from baths causing both dephasing and relaxation can also be achieved through the nested application of Uhrig sequences, again using single-qubit Pauli pulses. For the 3-qubit decoherence free subsystem (DFS) and related subsystem encodings, Pauli pulses are not naturally available operations; instead, exchange interactions provide all require…
We analyze and compare three different strategies, all aimed at controlling and eventually halting decoherence. The first strategy hinges upon the quantum Zeno effect, the second makes use of frequent unitary interruptions ("bang-bang" pulses and their generalization, quantum dynamical decoupling), and the third of a strong, continuous coupling. Decoherence is shown to be suppressed only if the frequency N of the measurements/pulses is large enough or if the coupling K is sufficiently strong. Otherwise, if N or K are large, but not extremely large, all these control procedures accelerate decoh…
The dynamics of a decohering two-level system driven by a suitable control Hamiltonian is studied. The control procedure is implemented as a sequence of radiofrequency pulses that repetitively flip the state of the system, a technique that can be termed quantum "bang-bang" control after its classical analog. Decoherence introduced by the system's interaction with a quantum environment is shown to be washed out completely in the limit of continuous flipping and greatly suppressed provided the interval between the pulses is made comparable to the correlation time of the environment. The model su…
We present a remarkable finding that a recently discovered [G. S. Uhrig, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 100504 (2007)] series of pulse sequences, designed to optimally restore coherence to a qubit in the spin-boson model of decoherence, is in fact completely model-independent and generically valid for arbitrary dephasing Hamiltonians given sufficiently short delay times between pulses. The series maximizes qubit fidelity versus number of applied pulses for sufficiently short delay times because the series, with each additional pulse, cancels successive orders of a time expansion for the fidelity decay. …
We propose an experiment in which an entangled pair of optical pulses are propagated through non-uniform gravitational fields. A field operator calculation of this situation predicts decoherence of the optical entanglement under experimentally realistic conditions.
Quantum enhancement of optical pulse timing accuracy is investigated in the Heisenberg picture. Effects of optical loss, group-velocity dispersion, and Kerr nonlinearity on the position and momentum of an optical pulse are studied via Heisenberg equations of motion. Using the developed formalism, the impact of decoherence by optical loss on the use of adiabatic soliton control for beating the timing standard quantum limit [Tsang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 023902 (2006)] is analyzed theoretically and numerically. The analysis shows that an appreciable enhancement can be achieved using current techno…
We propose a scheme for long-distance distribution of quantum entanglement in which the entanglement between qubits at intermediate stations of the channel is established by using bright light pulses in squeezed states coupled to the qubits in cavities with a weak dispersive interaction. The fidelity of the entanglement between qubits at the neighbor stations (10 km apart from each other) obtained by postselection through the balanced homodyne detection of 7 dB squeezed pulses can reach F=0.99 without using entanglement purification, at same time, the probability of successful generation of en…
A simulation of decoherence as random noise in the Hamiltonian is studied. The full Hamiltonian for the rf Squid is used, with the parameters chosen such that there is a double-potential well configuration where the two quasi-degenerate lowest levels are well separated from the rest. The results for these first two levels are in quantitative agreement with expectations from the ``spin 1/2'' picture for the behavior of a two-state system.
An ensemble of multilevel atoms is a good candidate for a quantum information storage device. The information is encrypted in the collective ground state atomic coherence, which, in the absence of external excitation, is decoupled from the vacuum and therefore decoherence free. However, in the process of manipulation of atoms with light pulses (writing, reading), one inadvertently introduces a coupling to the environment, i.e. a source of decoherence. The dissipation process is often treated as an independent process for each atom in the ensemble, an approach which fails at large atomic optica…
In this paper, we study the suppression of adiabatic decoherence in a three-level atom with $Λ$ configuration using bang-bang control technique. We have given the decoupling bang-bang operation group, and programmed a sequence of periodic radio frequency twinborn pulses to realize the control process. Moreover, we have studied the process with non-ideal situation and established the condition for efficient suppression of adiabatic decoherence.
We show how nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers can be used to determine the amplitude, phase and frequency of unknown weak monochromatic and multichromatic oscillating magnetic fields using only the periodic dynamical decoupling (PDD) and Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) sequences. The effect of decoherence on the measurement of the magnetic field parameters is explicitly analyzed, and we take into account the fact that different pulse sequences suppress decoherence to different extents. Since the sensitivity increases with increasing sensing time while it decreases due to decoherence, we use the F…
Implementation of quantum logical gates for multilevel system is demonstrated through decoherence control under the quantum adiabatic method using simple phase modulated laser pulses. We make use of selective population inversion and Hamiltonian evolution with time to achieve such goals robustly instead of the standard unitary transformation language.
Quantum state transfer and teleportation, with qubits encoded in internal states of the atoms in cavities, among spatially separated nodes of a quantum network in decoherence-free subspace are proposed, based on a cavity-assisted interaction by single-photon pulses. We show in details the implementation of a logic-qubit Hadamard gate and a two-logic-qubit conditional gate, and discuss the experimental feasibility of our scheme.
For neutral atom qubits, the two-qubit gate is typically realized via the Rydberg blockade effect, which hints about the special status of the Rydberg level besides the regular qubit register states. Here, we carry out experimental and theoretical studies to reveal how the ground-Rydberg coherence of the control qubit atom affects the process of two-qubit Controlled-Z ($C_Z$) gate, such as the commonly used ground-Rydberg $π$-gap-$π$ pulse sequence originally proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{85}, 2208 (2000). We measure the decoherence of the control qubit atom after the $π$-gap-$π$ pulses…
Relaxation effects impose fundamental limitations on our ability to coherently control quantum mechanical phenomena. In this letter, we establish physical limits on how closely can a quantum mechanical system be steered to a desired target state in the presence of relaxation. In particular, we explicitly compute the maximum coherence or polarization that can be transferred between coupled nuclear spins in the presence of very general decoherence mechanisms that include cross-correlated relaxation. We give analytical expressions for the control laws (pulse sequences) which achieve these physica…
A quantum memory interacts with its environment and loses information via decoherence as well as incoherence. A robust quantum control that prepares, preserves, and manipulates nonclassical correlations even in the presence of environmental influence is of paramount importance in quantum information processing. A well-known technique to suppress decoherence, namely Dynamical Decoupling (DD), consists of a sequence of rapid flips applied to the system in order to refocus the system-environment interactions. In this work, we integrate DD with quantum gates using optimal control techniques to rea…
We consider quantum decoherence in solid-state systems by studying the transverse dynamics of a single qubit interacting with a fermionic bath and driven by external pulses. Our interest is in investigating the extent to which the lost coherence can be restored by the application of external pulses to the qubit. We show that the qubit evolution under various pulse sequences can be mapped onto Keldysh path integrals. This approach allows a simple diagrammatic treatment of different bath excitation processes contributing to qubit decoherence. We apply this theory to the evolution of the qubit co…
In the framework of nuclear magnetic resonance, we consider the general problem of the coherent control of a spin coupled to a bath by means of composite or continuous pulses of duration $τ_\mathrm{p}$. We show explicity that it is possible to design the pulse in order to achieve a decoupling of the spin from the bath up to the third order in $τ_\mathrm{p}$. The evolution of the system is separated in the evolution of the spin under the action of the pulse and of the bath times correction terms. We derive the correction terms for a general time dependent axis of rotation and for a general coup…
We are considering a quantum version of the penny flip game, whose implementation is influenced by the environment that causes decoherence of the system. In order to model the decoherence we assume Markovian approximation of open quantum system dynamics. We focus our attention on the phase damping, amplitude damping and amplitude raising channels. Our results show that the Pauli strategy is no longer a Nash equilibrium under decoherence. We attempt to optimize the players' control pulses in the aforementioned setup to allow them to achieve higher probability of winning the game compared to the…
A scheme to implement a quantum computer subjected to decoherence and governed by an untunable qubit-qubit interaction is presented. By concatenating dynamical decoupling through bang-bang (BB) pulse with decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs) encoding, we protect the quantum computer from environment-induced decoherence that results in quantum information dissipating into the environment. For the inherent qubit-qubit interaction that is untunable in the quantum system, BB control plus DFSs encoding will eliminate its undesired effect which spoils quantum information in qubits. We show how this qua…
Proposals for scalable quantum computing devices suffer not only from decoherence due to the interaction with their environment, but also from severe engineering constraints. Here we introduce a practical solution to these major concerns, addressing solid state proposals in particular. Decoherence is first reduced by encoding a logical qubit into two qubits, then completely eliminated by an efficient set of decoupling pulse sequences. The same encoding removes the need for single-qubit operations, that pose a difficult design constraint. We further show how the dominant decoherence processes c…
We present a protocol to construct an arbitrary quantum circuit. The quantum bits (qubits) are encoded in polarisation states of single photons. They are stored in spatially separated dense media deposed in an optical cavity. Specific sequences of pulses address individually the storage media to encode the qubits and to implement a universal set of gates. The proposed protocol is decoherence-free in the sense that spontaneous emission and cavity damping are avoided. We discuss a coupling scheme for experimental implementation in Neon atoms.
The evolution of a two-state system driven by a sequence of imperfect pi pulses (with random phase or amplitude errors) is calculated. The resulting decreased fidelity is used to derive a plausible limit on the performance of "bang-bang" control methods for the suppression of decoherence.
The quantum state of the photon pair generated from type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion pumped by a ultrafast laser pulse exhibits strong decoherence in its polarization entanglement, an effect which can be attributed to the clock effect of the pump pulse or, equivalently, to distinguishing spectral information in the two-photon state. Here, we propose novel temporal and spectral engineering techniques to eliminate these detrimental decoherence effects. The temporal engineering of the two-photon wavefunction results in a universal Bell-state synthesizer that is independent of the ch…
This paper shows that under certain symmetry conditions the probability of remaining in the initial state (the probability of no transition) in a chainwise-connected multistate system driven by two or more delayed laser pulses does not depend on the pulse order.
Dynamical decoupling pulse sequences have been used to extend coherence times in quantum systems ever since the discovery of the spin-echo effect. Here we introduce a method of recursively concatenated dynamical decoupling pulses, designed to overcome both decoherence and operational errors. This is important for coherent control of quantum systems such as quantum computers. For bounded-strength, non-Markovian environments, such as for the spin-bath that arises in electron- and nuclear-spin based solid-state quantum computer proposals, we show that it is strictly advantageous to use concatenat…
Using an exactly solvable pure dephasing model, we show how entanglement between qubits can be generated via the interaction with a common environment and concurrent application of suitable control pulses. The control pulses are able to effectively remove the detrimental effect of the environment while preserving the indirect interaction between the qubits, thereby leading to the generation of near-perfect entanglement. Furthermore, we also investigate the entanglement dynamics if the qubits are directly interacting; this interaction may even contain a noise term. The present of this additiona…
We study adiabatic population transfer between discrete positions. Being closely related to STIRAP in optical systems, this transport is coherent and robust against variations of experimental parameters. Thanks to these properties the scheme is a promising candidate for transport of quantum information in quantum computing. We study the effects of spatially registered noise sources on the quantum transport and in particular model Markovian decoherence via non-local coupling to nearby quantum point contacts which serve as information readouts. We find that the rate of decoherence experienced by…
In the previous paper on this topic it was shown how, for a pulse of arbitrary shape and duration, the drive frequency can be analytically optimized to maximize the amplitude of the population oscillations between the selected two levels in a general many level quantum system. It was shown how the standard Rabi theory can be extended beyond the simple two-level systems. Now, in order to achieve the quickest and as complete as possible population transfer between two pre-selected levels, driving pulse should be tailored so that it produces only a single half-oscillation of the population. In th…
Uhrig's dynamical decoupling pulse sequence has emerged as one universal and highly promising approach to decoherence suppression. So far both the theoretical and experimental studies have examined single-qubit decoherence only. This work extends Uhrig's universal dynamical decoupling from one-qubit to two-qubit systems and even to general multi-level quantum systems. In particular, we show that by designing appropriate control Hamiltonians for a two-qubit or a multi-level system, Uhrig's pulse sequence can also preserve a generalized quantum coherence measure to the order of $1+O(T^{N+1})$, w…
We introduce universal broadband composite pulse sequences for robust high-fidelity population inversion in two-state quantum systems, which compensate deviations in any experimental parameter (e.g. pulse amplitude, pulse duration, detuning from resonance, Stark shifts, unwanted frequency chirp, etc.) and are applicable with any pulse shape. We demonstrate the efficiency and universality of these composite pulses by experimental data on rephasing of atomic coherences in a $\text{Pr}^{3+}\text{:}\text{Y}_2\text{SiO}_5$ crystal.
We investigate how to effectively preserve the entanglement between two noninteracting multilevel oscillators coupled to a common reservoir under non-ideal pulse control. A universal characterization using fidelity is developed for the behavior of the system based on Nakajima-Zwanzig projection operator technique. Our analysis includes the validity of the approximation method and the decoherence-suppression by the non-ideal pulse control. The power of our strategy for protecting entanglement is numerically tested, showing potential applications for quantum information processing.
The dominant source of decoherence for an electron spin in a quantum dot is the hyperfine interaction with the surrounding bath of nuclear spins. The decoherence process may be slowed down by subjecting the electron spin to suitable sequences of external control pulses. We investigate the performance of a variety of dynamical decoupling protocols using exact numerical simulation. Emphasis is given to realistic pulse delays and the long-time limit, beyond the domain where available analytical approaches are guaranteed to work. Our results show that both deterministic and randomized protocols ar…
Microwave pulses are used ubiquitously to control and measure qubits fabricated on superconducting circuits. Due to continual environmental coupling, the qubits undergo decoherence both when it is free and during its interaction with the microwave pulse. As quantum logic gates are executed through pulse-qubit interaction, we study theoretically the decoherence-induced effects during the interaction, especially the variations of the pulse, under a dissipative environment with linear spectral distribution. We find that a transmissible pulse of finite width adopts an asymmetric multi-hump shape, …
