Randomized Dynamical Decoupling Techniques for Coherent Quantum Control
Lorenza Viola, Lea F. Santos
备注：
7 pages, 2 figures. Replaced with final version. Invited talk delivered at the XXXVI Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, Snowbird, Jan 2006. To be published in J. Mod. Optics
The need for strategies able to accurately manipulate quantum dynamics is ubiquitous in quantum control and quantum information processing. We investigate two scenarios where randomized dynamical decoupling techniques become more advantageous with respect to standard deterministic methods in switching off unwanted dynamical evolution in a closed quantum system: when dealing with decoupling cycles which involve a large number of control actions and/or when seeking long-time quantum information storage. Highly effective hybrid decoupling schemes, which combine deterministic and stochastic features are discussed, as well as the benefits of sequentially implementing a concatenated method, applied at short times, followed by a hybrid protocol, employed at longer times. A quantum register consisting of a chain of spin-1/2 particles interacting via the Heisenberg interaction is used as a model for the analysis throughout.
We demonstrate the advantages of randomization in coherent quantum dynamical control. For systems which are either time-varying or require decoupling cycles involving a large number of operations, we find that simple randomized protocols offer superior convergence and stability as compared to deterministic counterparts. In addition, we show how randomization always allows to outperform purely deterministic schemes at long times, including combinatorial and concatenated methods. General criteria for optimally interpolating between deterministic and stochastic design are proposed and illustrated…
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The present thesis deals with various methods of quantum error correction. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, dynamical decoupling methods are considered which have the task of suppressing the influence of residual imperfections in a quantum memory. The suppression is achieved by altering the dynamics of an imperfect quantum memory with the help of a sequence of local unitary operations applied to the qudits. Whereas up to now the operations of such decoupling sequences have been constructed in a deterministic fashion, strategies are developed in this thesis which construct the o…
The problem of open-loop dynamical control of generic open quantum systems is addressed. In particular, I focus on the task of effectively switching off environmental couplings responsible for unwanted decoherence and dissipation effects. After revisiting the standard framework for dynamical decoupling via deterministic controls, I describe a different approach whereby the controller intentionally acquires a random component. An explicit error bound on worst-case performance of stochastic decoupling is presented.
In this paper, we present a dynamical decoupling (DD) technique to coherently control the dynamics of a single local phonon in trapped ions. A 2$π$ rotation at a motional sideband transition flips the sign of the relevant local phonon state, resulting in cancellation of the phonon dynamics. In this work, we implement DD using single and multiple blue-sideband pulses to control a single local phonon in two $^{40}{\rm Ca}^{+}$ ions in a linear Paul trap. Our proposed DD technique can be used to engineer coupling between local phonon modes.
Coherent state photon sources are widely used in quantum information processing. In many applications, such as quantum key distribution (QKD), a coherent state is functioned as a mixture of Fock states by assuming its phase is continuously randomized. In practice, such a crucial assumption is often not satisfied and, therefore, the security of existing QKD experiments is not guaranteed. To bridge this gap, we provide a rigorous security proof of QKD with discrete-phase-randomized coherent state sources. Our results show that the performance of the discrete-phase randomization case is close to …
We show that the addition of correlated phases to the recently developed method of randomized dynamical decoupling pulse sequences [Physical Review Letters 122, 200403 (2019)] can improve its performance in quantum sensing. In particular, by correlating the relative phases of basic pulse units in dynamical decoupling sequences, we are able to improve the suppression of the signal distortion due to $π$ pulse imperfections and spurious responses due to finite-width $π$ pulses. This enhances selectivity of quantum sensors such as those based on NV centers in diamond.
Randomized benchmarking is a powerful technique to efficiently estimate the performance and reliability of quantum gates, circuits and devices. Here we propose to perform randomized benchmarking in a coherent way, where superpositions of different random sequences rather than independent samples are used. We show that this leads to a uniform and simple protocol with significant advantages with respect to gates that can be benchmarked, and in terms of efficiency and scalability. We show that e.g. universal gate sets, the set of $n-$qudit Pauli operators or more general sets including arbitrary …
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Quantum key distribution (QKD) based on coherent states is well known for its implementation simplicity, but it suffers from loss-dependent attacks based on optimal unambiguous state discrimination. Crucially, previous research has suggested that coherent-state QKD is limited to short distances, typically below 100 km assuming standard optical fiber loss and system parameters. In this work, we propose a six-coherent-state phase-encoding QKD protocol that is able to tolerate the total loss of up to 38 dB assuming realistic system parameters, and up to 56 dB loss assuming zero noise. The securit…
We experimentally demonstrate coherence recovery of singlet-triplet superpositions by interlacing qubit rotations between Carr-Purcell (CP) echo sequences. We then compare performance of Hahn, CP, concatenated dynamical decoupling (CDD) and Uhrig dynamical decoupling (UDD) for singlet recovery. In the present case, where gate noise and drift combined with spatially varying hyperfine coupling contribute significantly to dephasing, and pulses have limited bandwidth, CP and CDD yield comparable results, with T2 ~ 80 microseconds.
Scalable quantum information processing requires the ability to tune multi-qubit interactions. This makes the precise manipulation of quantum states particularly difficult for multi-qubit interactions because tunability unavoidably introduces sensitivity to fluctuations in the tuned parameters, leading to erroneous multi-qubit gate operations. The performance of quantum algorithms may be severely compromised by coherent multi-qubit errors. It is therefore imperative to understand how these fluctuations affect multi-qubit interactions and, more importantly, to mitigate their influence. In this …
We experimentally investigate the non-Gaussian features of the phase-randomized coherent states, a class of states exploited in communication channels and in decoy state-based quantum key distribution protocols. In particular, we reconstruct their phase-insensitive Wigner functions and quantify their non-Gaussianity. The measurements are performed in the mesoscopic photon-number domain by means of a direct detection scheme involving linear detectors.
We demonstrate the generation of coherent Stokes pulses with randomized linear-polarization in diamond, when the pump wave-vector and linear polarization were oriented along the $[110]$ and $[1\bar{1}0]$ axes respectively. In this configuration the excitation of multiple Raman modes produces isotropic gain, preventing the Stokes pulse from acquiring a deterministic orientation and is instead randomized by the zero-point motion of the crystal. Experimental polarization measurements were consistent with an independent, identical distribution with an estimated entropy rate of 6.67 bits per pulse.
Randomized compiling reduces the effects of errors on quantum computers by tailoring arbitrary Markovian errors into stochastic Pauli noise. Here we prove that randomized compiling also tailors non-Markovian errors into local stochastic Pauli noise and investigate the technique's limitations. We show through analysis and numerical results that randomized compiling alters errors in three distinct helpful ways. First, it prevents the coherent accumulation of errors (including hard to remove crosstalk effects) across gate cycles by destroying intercycle coherent correlations. Second, it converts …
The successful implementation of algorithms on quantum processors relies on the accurate control of quantum bits (qubits) to perform logic gate operations. In this era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computing, systematic miscalibrations, drift, and crosstalk in the control of qubits can lead to a coherent form of error which has no classical analog. Coherent errors severely limit the performance of quantum algorithms in an unpredictable manner, and mitigating their impact is necessary for realizing reliable quantum computations. Moreover, the average error rates measured by randomi…
We present the experimental investigation of the non-Gaussian nature of some mixtures of Fock states by reconstructing their Wigner function and exploiting two recently introduced measures of non-Gaussianity. In particular, we demonstrate the consistency between the different approaches and the monotonicity of the two measures for states belonging to the class of phase randomized coherent states. Moreover, we prove that the exact behavior of one measure with respect to the other depends on the states under investigation and devise possible criteria to discriminate which measure is more useful …
Control scenarios have been identified where the use of randomized design may substantially improve the performance of dynamical decoupling methods [L. F. Santos and L. Viola, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 97}, 150501 (2006)]. Here, by focusing on the suppression of internal unwanted interactions in closed quantum systems, we review and further elaborate on the advantages of randomization at long evolution times. By way of illustration, special emphasis is devoted to isolated Heisenberg-coupled chains of spin-1/2 particles. In particular, for nearest-neighbor interactions, two types of decoupling cycl…
Quantum processes involving single-photon states are of broad interest in particular for quantum communication. Extending to continuous values a recent proposal by Yuan et al \cite{YUAN16}, we show that single-photon quantum processes can be characterized using phase randomized coherent states (PRCS) as inputs. As a proof of principle, we present the experimental investigation of single-photon tomography using PRCS. The probability distribution of field quadratures measurements for single-photon states can be accurately derived from the PRCS data. As a consequence, the Wigner function and the …
We simulate the dynamics of varying density quasi-two-dimensional spin ensembles in solid-state systems, focusing on the nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. We consider the effects of various control sequences on the averaged dynamics of large ensembles of spins, under a realistic "spin-bath" environment. We reveal that spin locking is efficient for decoupling spins initialized along the driving axis, both from coherent dipolar interactions and from the external spin-bath environment, when the driving is two orders of magnitude stronger than the relevant coupling energies. Since the applicati…
When cavity photons couple to an optical fiber with a continuum of modes, they usually leak out within a finite amount of time. However, if the fiber is about one meter long and linked to a mirror, photons bounce back and forth within the fiber on a much faster time scale. As a result, {\em dynamical decoupling} prevents the cavity photons from entering the fiber. In this paper we use the simultaneous dynamical decoupling of a large number of distant cavities from the fiber modes of linear optics networks to mediate effective cavity-cavity interactions in a huge variety of configurations. Cohe…
We demonstrate high-rate randomized data-encryption through optical fibers using the inherent quantum-measurement noise of coherent states of light. Specifically, we demonstrate 650Mbps data encryption through a 10Gbps data-bearing, in-line amplified 200km-long line. In our protocol, legitimate users (who share a short secret-key) communicate using an M-ry signal set while an attacker (who does not share the secret key) is forced to contend with the fundamental and irreducible quantum-measurement noise of coherent states. Implementations of our protocol using both polarization-encoded signal s…
Coherent optical control schemes exploit the coherence of laser pulses to change the phases of interfering dynamical pathways in order to manipulate dynamical processes. These active control methods are closely related to dynamical decoupling techniques, popularized in the field of Quantum Information. Inspired by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, dynamical decoupling methods apply sequences of unitary operations to modify the interference phenomena responsible for the system dynamics thus also belonging to the general class of coherent control techniques. Here we review related d…
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…
We revisit the problem of switching off unwanted phase evolution and decoherence in a single two-state quantum system in the light of recent results on random dynamical decoupling methods [L. Viola and E. Knill, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 94}, 060502 (2005)]. A systematic comparison with standard cyclic decoupling is effected for a variety of dynamical regimes, including the case of both semiclassical and fully quantum decoherence models. In particular, exact analytical expressions are derived for randomized control of decoherence from a bosonic environment. We investigate quantitatively control pr…
In this work we develop a numerical framework to investigate the renormalization of the non-Markovian dynamics of an open quantum system to which dynamical decoupling is applied. We utilize a non-Markovian master equation which is derived from the non-Markovian quantum trajectories formalism. It contains incoherent Markovian dynamics and coherent Schrödinger dynamics as its limiting cases and is capable of capture the transition between them. We have performed comprehensive simulations for the cases in which the system is either driven by the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise or or is described by the …
The aim of dynamical decoupling consists in the suppression of decoherence by appropriate coherent control of a quantum register. Effectively, the interaction with the environment is reduced. In particular, a sequence of $π$ pulses is considered. Here we present exact results on the suppression of the coupling of a quantum bit to its environment by optimized sequences of $π$ pulses. The effect of various cutoffs of the spectral density of the environment is investigated. As a result we show that the harder the cutoff is the better an optimized pulse sequence can deal with it. For cutoffs which…
We develop a general theory for quantum key distribution (QKD) in both the forward error correction and the reverse error correction cases when the QKD system is equipped with phase-randomized coherent light with arbitrary number of decoy intensities. For this purpose, generalizing Wang's expansion, we derive a convex expansion of the phase-randomized coherent state. We also numerically check that the asymptotic key generation rates are almost saturated when the number of decoy intensities is three.
Quantum computers are poised to radically outperform their classical counterparts by manipulating coherent quantum systems. A realistic quantum computer will experience errors due to the environment and imperfect control. When these errors are even partially coherent, they present a major obstacle to achieving robust computation. Here, we propose a method for introducing independent random single-qubit gates into the logical circuit in such a way that the effective logical circuit remains unchanged. We prove that this randomization tailors the noise into stochastic Pauli errors, leading to dra…
Engineering protected cavity-QED interactions through pulsed dynamical decoupling
University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU（巴斯克地区大学）；Instituto de Física Teórica, UAM-CSIC, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（马德里自治大学理论物理研究所）；Quantronics Group, SPEC, CEA Saclay, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎综合理工学院集团、SPEC、CEA萨克雷、CNRS、巴黎萨克雷大学）；Department of Physics, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院物理系）；Walther-Meißner-Institut, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften（瓦尔特·迈斯纳研究所，巴伐利亚科学院）；Technische Universität München, TUM School of Natural Sciences, Physics Department（慕尼黑工业大学自然科学学院物理系）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）
Dynamical decoupling (DD) is an active and effective method for suppressing decoherence of a quantum system from its environment. In contrast to the nominal biaxial DD,this work presents a uniaxial decoupling protocol that requires a significantly reduced number of pulses and a much lower bias field satisfying the "magic" condition.We show this uniaxial DD protocol works effectively in a number of model systems of practical interests, e.g., a spinor atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in stray magnetic fields (classical noise), or an electron spin coupled to nuclear spins (quantum noise) in a semi…
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) schemes can be applied to micron-, and nanometer-sized samples by the aid of quantum sensors such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond. These minute devices allow for magnetometry of nuclear spin ensembles with high spatial and frequency resolution at ambient conditions, thus having a clear impact in different areas such as chemistry, biology, medicine, and material sciences. In practice, NV quantum sensors are driven by microwave (MW) control fields with a twofold objective: On the one hand, MW fields bridge the energy gap between NV and nearby nu…
Increasing and stabilizing the coherence of superconducting quantum circuits and resonators is of utmost importance for various technologies ranging from quantum information processors to highly sensitive detectors of low-temperature radiation in astrophysics. A major source of noise in such devices is a bath of quantum two-level systems (TLSs) with broad distribution of energies, existing in disordered dielectrics and on surfaces. Here we study the dielectric loss of superconducting resonators in the presence of a periodic electric bias field, which sweeps near-resonant TLSs in and out of res…
We propose a new theory on a relation between diffusive and coherent nature in one dimensional wave mechanics based on a quantum walk. It is known that the quantum walk in homogeneous matrices provides the coherent property of wave mechanics. Using the recent result of a localization phenomenon in a one-dimensional quantum walk (Konno, Quantum Inf. Proc. (2010) 9, 405-418), we numerically show that the randomized localized matrices suppress the coherence and give diffusive nature.
We prove the security of the Bennett-Brassard (BB84) quantum key distribution protocol in the case where the key information is encoded in the relative phase of a coherent-state reference pulse and a weak coherent-state signal pulse, as in some practical implementations of the protocol. In contrast to previous work, our proof applies even if the eavesdropper knows the phase of the reference pulse, provided that this phase is not modulated by the source, and even if the reference pulse is bright. The proof also applies to the case where the key is encoded in the photon polarization of a weak co…
With improved gate calibrations reducing unitary errors, we achieve a benchmarked single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.95% with superconducting qubits in a circuit quantum electrodynamics system. We present a method for distinguishing between unitary and non-unitary errors in quantum gates by interleaving repetitions of a target gate within a randomized benchmarking sequence. The benchmarking fidelity decays quadratically with the number of interleaved gates for unitary errors but linearly for non-unitary, allowing us to separate systematic coherent errors from decoherent effects. With this protoc…
Thanks to the single-photon interference at a third untrusted party, the twin-field quantun key distribution (TF-QKD) protocol and its variants can beat the well-known rate-loss bound without quantum repeaters, and related experiments have been implemented recently. Generally, quantum states in these schemes should be randomly switched between the code mode and test mode. To adopt the standard decoy-state method, phases of coherent state sources in the test mode are assumed to be continuously randomized. However, such a crucial assumption cannot be well satisfied in experimental implementation…
Leakage errors arise when the quantum state leaks out of some subspace of interest, for example, the two-level subspace of a multi-level system defining a computational `qubit' or the logical code space defined by some quantum error-correcting code or decoherence-free subspace. Leakage errors pose a distinct challenge to quantum control relative to the more well-studied decoherence errors and can be a limiting factor to achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we present scalable and robust randomized benchmarking protocols for quickly estimating the rates of both coherent and incohe…
The ability to transfer coherent quantum information between systems is a fundamental component of quantum technologies and leads to coherent correlations within the global quantum process. However correlation structures in quantum channels are less studied than those in quantum states. Motivated by recent techniques in randomized benchmarking, we develop a range of results for efficient estimation of correlations within a bipartite quantum channel. We introduce sub-unitarity measures that are invariant under local changes of basis, generalize the unitarity of a channel, and allow for the anal…
Dynamical decoupling is a coherent control technique where the intrinsic and extrinsic couplings of a quantum system are effectively averaged out by application of specially designed driving fields (refocusing pulse sequences). This entails pumping energy into the system, which can be especially dangerous when it has sharp spectral features like a cavity mode close to resonance. In this work we show that such an effect can be avoided with properly constructed refocusing sequences. To this end we construct the average Hamiltonian expansion for the system evolution operator associated with a sin…
Coherent errors in quantum operations are ubiquitous. Whether arising from spurious environmental couplings or errors in control fields, such errors can accumulate rapidly and degrade the performance of a quantum circuit significantly more than an average gate fidelity may indicate. As Hastings [1] and Campbell [2] have recently shown, by replacing the deterministic implementation of a quantum gate with a randomized ensemble of implementations, on can dramatically suppress coherent errors. Our work begins by reformulating the results of Hastings and Campbell as a quantum optimal control proble…
Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学量子信息与控制中心）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学电气与计算机工程系）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学物理与天文学系）
We propose and experimentally demonstrate non-destructive and noiseless removal (filtering) of vacuum states from an arbitrary set of coherent states of continuous variable systems. Errors i.e. vacuum states in the quantum information are diagnosed through a weak measurement, and on that basis, probabilistically filtered out. We consider three different filters based on on/off detection phase stabilized and phase randomized homodyne detection. We find that on/off etection, optimal in the ideal theoretical setting, is superior to the homodyne strategy in a practical setting.
We present the full characterization of phase-randomized or phase-averaged coherent states, a class of states exploited in communication channels and in decoy state-based quantum key distribution protocols. In particular, we report on the suitable formalism to analytically describe the main features of this class of states and on their experimental investigation, that results in agreement with theory. We also show the results we obtained by manipulating the phase-averaged coherent states with linear optical elements and testify their good quality by employing some non-Gaussianity measures and …
