Gaussian Decoherence and Gaussian Echo from Spin Environments
W. H. Zurek, F. M. Cucchietti, J. P. Paz
备注：
Improved text and figures, to appear in the special issue of Acta Physica Polonica B celebrating the 100th anniversary of Smoluchowski's equation and his paper explaining Brownian motion (in http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/acta/vol38/pdf/v38p1685.pdf)
We examine an exactly solvable model of decoherence -- a spin-system interacting with a collection of environment spins. We show that in this simple model (introduced some time ago to illustrate environment--induced superselection) generic assumptions about the coupling strengths lead to a universal (Gaussian) suppression of coherence between pointer states. We explore the regime of validity of this result and discuss its relation to spectral features of the environment. We also consider its relevance to the experiments on the so-called Loschmidt echo (which measures, in effect, the fidelity between the initial and time-reversed or "echo" signal). In particular, we show that for partial reversals (e.g., when of only a part of the total Hamiltonian changes sign) fidelity will exhibit a Gaussian dependence on the time of reversal. In such cases echo may become independent of the details of the reversal procedure or the specifics of the coupling to the environment. This puzzling behavior was observed in several NMR experiments. Natural candidates for such two environments (one of which is easily reversed, while the other is ``irreversible'') are suggested for the experiment involving ferrocene.
Entanglement between a quantum system and its environment leads to loss of coherence in the former. In general, the temporal fate of coherences is complicated. Here, we establish the connection between decoherence of a central system and fidelity decay in the environment for a variety of situations, including both, energy conserving and dissipative couplings. We show how properties of unitary time evolution of the environment can be inferred from the non-unitary evolution of coherences in the central system. This opens up promising ways for measuring Loschmidt echoes in a variety of situations…
We employ the Loschmidt Echo, i.e. the signal recovered after the reversal of an evolution, to identify and quantify the processes contributing to decoherence. This procedure, which has been extensively used in single particle physics, is here employed in a spin ladder. The isolated chains have 1/2 spins with XY interaction and their excitations would sustain a one-body like propagation. One of them constitutes the controlled system S whose reversible dynamics is degraded by the weak coupling with the uncontrolled second chain, i.e. the environment E. The perturbative SE coupling is swept thro…
An initial local excitation in a confined quantum system evolves exploring the whole system, returning to the initial position as a mesoscopic echo at the Heisenberg time. We consider a two weakly coupled spin chains, a spin ladder, where one is a quantum channel while the other represents an environment. We quantify decoherence in the quantum channel through the attenuation of the mesoscopic echoes. We evaluate decoherence rates for different ratios between sources of amplitude fluctuation and dephasing in the inter-chain interaction Hamiltonian. The many-body dynamics is seen as a one-body e…
Environment--induced decoherence causes entropy increase. It can be quantified using, e.g., the purity $ς={\rm Tr}ρ^2$. When the Hamiltonian of a quantum system is perturbed, its sensitivity to such perturbation can be measured by the Loschmidt echo $\bar M(t)$. It is given by the average squared overlap between the perturbed and unperturbed state. We describe the relation between the temporal behavior of $ς(t)$ and $\bar M(t)$. In this way we show that the decay of the Loschmidt echo can be analyzed using tools developed in the study of decoherence. In particular, for systems with a classical…
The Loschmidt echo and the purity are two quantities that can provide invaluable information about the evolution of a quantum system. While the Loschmidt echo characterizes instability and sensitivity to perturbations, purity measures the loss of coherence produced by an environment coupled to the system. For classically chaotic systems both quantities display a number of -- supposedly universal -- regimes that can lead on to think of them as equivalent quantities. We study the decay of the Loschmidt echo and the purity for systems with finite dimensional Hilbert space and present numerical ev…
The spin echo approach is extended to include bio-complexes for which the interaction with dynamical noise is strong. Significant restoration of the free induction decay signal due to homogeneous (decoherence) and inhomogeneous (dephasing) broadening is demonstrated analytically and numerically, for both an individual dimer of interacting chlorophylls and for an ensemble of dimers. This approach is based on an exact and closed system of ordinary differential equations that can be easily solved for a wide range of parameters that are relevant for bio-applications.
We revisit the problem of decoherence of a qubit centrally coupled to an interacting spin environment, here modeled by a quantum compass chain or an extended XY model in a staggered magnetic field. These two models both support distinct spin liquid phases, adding a new element to the problem. By analyzing their Loschmidt echoes when perturbed by the qubit we find that a fast decoherence of the qubit is conditioned on the presence of propagating quasiparticles which couple to it. Different from expectations based on earlier works on central spin models, our result implies that the closeness of …
We define a quantity, the so-called purity fidelity, which measures the rate of dynamical irreversibility due to decoherence, observed e.g in echo experiments, in the presence of an arbitrary small perturbation of the total (system + environment) Hamiltonian. We derive a linear response formula for the purity fidelity in terms of integrated time correlation functions of the perturbation. Our relation predicts, similarly to the case of fidelity decay, faster decay of purity fidelity the slower decay of time correlations is. In particular, we find exponential decay in quantum mixing regime and f…
In the long quest to identify and compensate the sources of decoherence in many-body systems far from the ground state, the varied family of Loschmidt echoes (LEs) became an invaluable tool in several experimental techniques. A LE involves a time-reversal procedure to assess the effect of perturbations in a quantum excitation dynamics. However, when addressing macroscopic systems one is repeatedly confronted with limitations that seem insurmountable. This led to formulate the \textit{central hypothesis of irreversibility} stating that the time-scale of decoherence, $T_3$, is proportional to th…
A quantum cluster expansion method is developed for the problem of localized electron spin decoherence due to dipolar fluctuations of lattice nuclear spins. At the lowest order it provides a microscopic explanation for the Lorentzian diffusion of Hahn echoes without resorting to any phenomenological Markovian assumption. Our numerical results show remarkable agreement with recent electron spin echo experiments in phosphorus doped silicon.
We examine an exactly solvable model of decoherence - a spin-system interacting with a collection of environment spins. We show that in this model (introduced some time ago to illustrate environment-induced superselection) generic assumptions about the coupling strengths lead to a universal (Gaussian) suppression of coherence between pointer states. We explore the regimes of validity of these results and discuss their relation to the spectral features of the environment and to the Loschmidt echo (or fidelity). Finally, we comment on the observation of such time dependence in spin echo experime…
We study the decoherence of a one-particle system, whose classical correpondent is chaotic, when it evolves coupled to a weak quenched environment. This is done by analytical evaluation of the Loschmidt Echo, (i.e. the revival of a localized density excitation upon reversal of its time evolution), in presence of the perturbation. We predict an exponential decay for the Loschmidt Echo with a (decoherence) rate which is asymptotically given by the mean Lyapunov exponent of the classical system, and therefore independent of the perturbation strength, within a given range of strengths. Our results…
We investigated the preservation of information encoded into the relative phase and amplitudes of optical pulses during storage and retrieval in an optical memory based on stimulated photon echo. By interfering photon echoes produced in a Ti-indiffused single-mode Er-doped LiNbO$_{3}$ waveguiding structure at telecom wavelength, we found that decoherence in the atomic medium translates only as losses (and not as degradation) of information, as long as the data pulse series is short compared to the atomic decoherence time. The experimentally measured value of the visibility for interfering echo…
Central spin decoherence is useful for detecting many-body physics in environments and moreover, the spin echo control can remove the effects of static thermal fluctuations so that the quantum fluctuations are revealed. The central spin decoherence approach, however, is feasible only in some special configurations and often requires uniform coupling between the central spin and individual spins in the baths, which are very challenging in experiments. Here, by making analogue between central spin decoherence and depolarization of photons, we propose a scheme of Faraday rotation echo spectroscop…
The decoherence times of orthogonally phased components of the optical transition dipole moment in a two-level system have been observed to differ by an order of magnitude. This phase anisotropy is observed in coherent transient experiments where an optical driving field is present during extended periods of decoherence. The decoherence time of the component of the dipole moment in phase with the driving field is extended compared to T_2, obtained from two-pulse photon echoes, in analogy with the spin locking technique of NMR.
The Loschmidt echo (LE) is a measure of the sensitivity of quantum mechanics to perturbations in the evolution operator. It is defined as the overlap of two wave functions evolved from the same initial state but with slightly different Hamiltonians. Thus, it also serves as a quantification of irreversibility in quantum mechanics. In this thesis the LE is studied in systems that have a classical counterpart with dynamical instability, that is, classically chaotic. An analytical treatment that makes use of the semiclassical approximation is presented. It is shown that, under certain regime of th…
Gamow vectors have been developed in order to give a mathematical description for quantum decay phenomena. Mainly, they have been applied to radioactive phenomena, scattering and to some decoherence models. They play a crucial role in the description of quantum irreversible processes, and in the formulation of time asymmetry in quantum mechanics. In this paper, we use this formalism to describe a well-known phenomenon of irreversibility: the Loschmidt echo. The standard approach considers that the irreversibility of this phenomenon is the result of an additional term in the backward Hamiltonia…
We show that portions of an image written into a gradient echo memory can be individually retrieved or erased on demand, an important step towards processing a spatially multiplexed quantum signal. Targeted retrieval is achieved by locally addressing the transverse plane of the storage medium, a warm 85Rb vapor, with a far-detuned control beam. Spatially addressable erasure is similarly implemented by imaging a bright beam tuned near the 85Rb D1 line in order to scatter photons and induce decoherence. Under our experimental conditions atomic diffusion is shown to impose an upper bound on the e…
We study the Loschmidt echo (LE) in a central spin model in which a central spin is globally coupled to an environment (E) which is subjected to a small and sudden quench at $t=0$ so that its state at $t=0^+$, remains the same as the ground state of the initial environmental Hamiltonian before the quench; this leads to a non-equilibrium situation. This state now evolves with two Hamiltonians, the final Hamiltonian following the quench and its modified version which incorporates an additional term arising due to the coupling of the central spin to the environment. Using a generic short-time sca…
Classical chaotic dynamics is characterized by the exponential sensitivity to initial conditions. Quantum mechanics, however, does not show this feature. We consider instead the sensitivity of quantum evolution to perturbations in the Hamiltonian. This is observed as an atenuation of the Loschmidt Echo, $M(t)$, i.e. the amount of the original state (wave packet of width $σ$) which is recovered after a time reversed evolution, in presence of a classically weak perturbation. By considering a Lorentz gas of size $L$, which for large $L$ is a model for an {\it unbounded} classically chaotic system…
We employ a continuous dynamical decoupling scheme to suppress the decoherence induced by elastic collisions of cold atoms. Using a continuous echo pulse we achieve a thirty-fold increase in the coherence time of Rb87 atoms trapped in a dipole trap. Coherence times of more than 100ms are demonstrated for an ensemble with an optical depth of 120.
Experiments involving phase coherent dynamics of networks of spins, such as echo experiments, will only work if decoherence can be suppressed. We show here, by analyzing the particular example of a crystalline network of Fe8 molecules, that most decoherence typically comes from pairwise interactions (particularly dipolar interactions) between the spins, which cause `correlated errors'. However at very low T these are strongly suppressed. These results have important implications for the design of quantum information processing systems using electronic spins.
For a central system uniformly coupled to a XY spin-1/2 bath in a transverse field, we explicitly calculate the Loschmidt echo(LE) to characterize decoherence quantitatively. We find that the anisotropy parameter $γ$ affects decoherence of the central system sensitively when $γ\in [0,1]$% , in particular, the LE becomes unit without varying with time when $γ=0 $, implying that environment-induced decoherence vanishes . Some other cases in which the LE is unit are discussed also.
We consider the decoherence of a single localized electron spin due to its coupling to the lattice nuclear spin bath in a semiconductor quantum computer architecture. In the presence of an external magnetic field and at low temperatures, the dominant decoherence mechanism is the spectral diffusion of the electron spin resonance frequency due to the temporally fluctuating random magnetic field associated with the dipolar interaction induced flip-flops of nuclear spin pairs. The electron spin dephasing due to this random magnetic field depends intricately on the quantum dynamics of the nuclear s…
The electrical detection of spin echoes via echo tomography is used to observe decoherence processes associated with the electrical readout of the spin state of phosphorus donor electrons in silicon near a SiO$_2$ interface. Using the Carr-Purcell pulse sequence, an echo decay with a time constant of $1.7\pm0.2 \rm{μs}$ is observed, in good agreement with theoretical modeling of the interaction between donors and paramagnetic interface states. Electrical spin echo tomography thus can be used to study the spin dynamics in realistic spin qubit devices for quantum information processing.
Coherence evolution and echo effect of an electron spin, which is coupled inhomogeneously to an interacting one-dimensional finite spin bath via hyperfine-type interaction, is studied using the adaptive time dependent density matrix renormalization group (t-DMRG) method. It is found that the interplay of the coupling inhomogeneity and the transverse intra-bath interactions results in two qualitatively different coherence evolutions, namely, a coherence preserving evolution characterized by periodic oscillation and a complete decoherence evolution. Correspondingly, the echo effects induced by a…
A double-rephasing photon-echo (DRPE) scheme inherently satisfies no-population inversion condition for quantum memory applications, while the resultant absorptive coherence prohibits echo radiation out of the medium. To solve the absorptive echo problem in the DRPE scheme, a controlled double-rephasing echo protocol has been presented and discussed for the collective atom phase control. In the DRPE scheme, however, a typical Gaussian light can cause imperfect rephasing processes resulting in a partial emission of photon echoes. Here, the rephasing process of individual ensemble atoms is thoro…
If a magnetic polarization excess is locally injected in a crystal of interacting spins, this "excitation" would spread as consequence of spin-spin interactions. Such an apparently irreversible process is known as spin diffusion and it can lead the system back to "equilibrium". Even so, a unitary quantum dynamics would ensure a precise memory of the non-equilibrium initial condition. Then, if at certain time, say $t/2$, an experimental protocol reverses the many-body dynamics, it would drive the system back to the initial non-equilibrium state at time $t$. As a matter of fact, the reversal is …
We experimentally demonstrate the strong suppression of dephasing of a qubit stored in a single \textsuperscript{87}Rb atom in an optical dipole trap by using Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill(CPMG) pulse sequences. Regarded as a repetition of spin echo, CPMG sequence is an optimal choice for suppressing both inhomogeneous and homogeneous phase decoherence mechanisms. In the trap with 830 nm wavelength and 0.7 mK potential depth, the spin relaxation time of single atoms is showed to be 830.8 ms. We obtain the reversible inhomogeneous dephasing time of $T_{2}^{\ast}$=1.4 ms. The homogeneous dephasing t…
Dynamical irreversibility and local decoherence in quantum many-body chaos
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学物理研究所）；Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学核科学研究所）；Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究院复杂系统理论物理中心）
We report on the collapse and revival of Ramsey fringe visibility when a spatially dependent phase is imprinted in the coherences of a trapped ensemble of two-level atoms. The phase is imprinted via the light shift from a Gaussian laser beam which couples the dynamics of internal and external degrees of freedom for the atoms in an echo spectroscopy sequence. The observed revivals are directly linked to the oscillatory motion of atoms in the trap. An understanding of the effect is important for quantum state engineering of trapped atoms.
We study the effects of diffusion on a $Λ$-gradient echo memory, which is a coherent optical quantum memory using thermal gases. The efficiency of this memory is high for short storage time, but decreases exponentially due to decoherence as the storage time is increased. We study the effects of both longitudinal and transverse diffusion in this memory system, and give both analytical and numerical results that are in good agreement. Our results show that diffusion has a significant effect on the efficiency. Further, we suggest ways to reduce these effects to improve storage efficiency.
Qubits, the quantum mechanical bits required for quantum computing, must retain their fragile quantum states over long periods of time. In many types of electron spin qubits, the primary source of decoherence is the interaction between the electron spins and nuclear spins of the host lattice. For electrons in gate defined GaAs quantum dots, previous spin echo measurements have revealed coherence times of about 1 $μ$s at low magnetic fields below 100 mT. Here, we show that coherence in such devices can actually survive to much longer times, and provide a detailed understanding of the measured n…
We revisit the decoherence of the atomic state in the resonant Jaynes-Cummings model with the field initially being in a coherent state. We show that the purity of the atom exhibits oscillating Gaussian dependence on the time with a width independent of the initial atomic state. It is also shown that when the atom and the coherent state match each other in phase, the atomic decoherence is Gaussian time dependence.
Decoherence induced by coupling a system with an environment may display universal features. Here we demostrate that when the coupling to the system drives a quantum phase transition in the environment, the temporal decay of quantum coherences in the system is Gaussian with a width independent of the system-environment coupling strength. The existence of this effect opens the way for a new type of quantum simulation algorithm, where a single qubit is used to detect a quantum phase transition. We discuss possible implementations of such algorithm and we relate our results to available data on u…
In Echo experiments, imperfect time-reversal operations are performed on a subset of the total number of degrees of freedom. To capture the physics of these experiments, we introduce a partial fidelity, the Boltzmann echo, where only part of the system's degrees of freedom can be time-reversed. We present a semiclassical calculation of the Boltzmann echo. We show that, as the time-reversal operation is performed more and more accurately, the decay rate of the Boltzmann echo saturates at a value given by the decoherence rate of the controlled degrees of freedom due to their coupling to uncontro…
Evaluating the role of perturbations versus the intrinsic coherent dynamics in driving to equilibrium is of fundamental interest to understand quantum many-body thermalization, in the quest to build ever complex quantum devices. Here we introduce a protocol that scales down the coupling strength in a quantum simulator based on a solid-state nuclear spin system, leading to a longer decay time T2, while keeping perturbations associated to control error constant. We can monitor quantum information scrambling by measuring two powerful metrics, out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) and Loschmidt …
We investigate the decoherence of Er$^{3+}$ in Y$_2$SiO$_5$ at low magnetic fields using the photon-echo technique. We reproduce accurately a variety of the decay curves with a unique coherence time by considering the so-called superhyperfine modulation induced by a large number of neighbouring spins. There is no need to invoke any characteristic time of the spin fluctuations to reproduce very different decay curves. The number of involved nuclei increases when the magnetic is lowered. The experiment is compared with a model associating 100 surrounding ions with their exact positions in the cr…
We study Si:P donor electron spin decoherence due to anisotropic hyperfine (AHF) interaction with the surrounding nuclear spin bath. In particular, we clarify the electron spin echo envelope modulation (ESEEM) in the Si:P system and the resonancelike contributions from nuclear spins in various shells away from the P atoms. We suggest an approach to minimize AHF-induced decoherence by avoiding the resonances and orienting an applied magnetic field along directions that can periodically eliminate contributions from the dominant nearest neighbor atoms. Our remarkable agreement with experiment dem…
This paper identifies and investigates nature of the transition between Gaussian and exponential forms of decoherence. We show that the decoherence factor (that controls the time dependence of the suppression of the off-diagonal terms when the density matrix is expressed in the pointer basis representation) can be described by the convolution of Gaussian and exponential functions, their contributions modulated by the strength of the system-environment interaction. In the strong and weak coupling limits, decoherence reduces to the familiar Gaussian and exponential forms, respectively. The mecha…
We report on room-temperature coherent manipulation of the spin of a single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond and a study of its coherence as a function of magnetic field. We use magnetic resonance to induce Rabi nutations, and apply a Hahn spin echo to remove the effect of low-frequency dephasing. A sharp rise in the decoherence rate is observed at magnetic fields where the nitrogen-vacancy center spin couples resonantly to substitutional nitrogen spins via the magnetic dipolar coupling. Finally, we find evidence that away from these energy resonances spin flips of nitrogen electrons are the…
We study the problem of measurement-induced decoherence using the phase-space approach employing the Gaussian-smoothed Wigner distribution function. Our investigation is based on the notion that measurement-induced decoherence is represented by the transition from the Wigner distribution to the Gaussian-smoothed Wigner distribution with the widths of the smoothing function identified as measurement errors. We also compare the smoothed Wigner distribution with the corresponding distribution resulting from the classical analysis. The distributions we computed are the phase-space distributions fo…
The temperature dependence of the coherence time of hole spins confined in self-assembled (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots is studied by spin mode-locking and spin echo techniques. Coherence times limited to about a μs are measured for temperatures below 8 K. For higher temperatures a fast drop occurs down to a few ns over a 10 K range. The hole-nuclear hyperfine interaction appears too weak to account for these limitations. We suggest that spin-orbit related interactions are the decisive sources for hole spin decoherence.
Motivated by atom optics experiments, we investigate a new class of fidelity functions describing the reconstruction of quantum states by time-reversal operations as $M_{\mathrm{Da}}(t) = | <ψ| e^{i H_2 t / 2} e^{i H_1 t / 2} e^{-i H_2 t / 2} e^{-i H_1 t / 2} | ψ>|^2$. We show that the decay of $M_{\mathrm{Da}}$ is quartic in time at short times, and that it freezes well above the ergodic value at long times, when $H_2-H_1$ is not too large. The long-time saturation value of $M_{\mathrm{Da}}$ contains easily extractable information on the strength of decoherence in these systems.
We demonstrate a method for finding the decoherence-subalgebra $\mathcal{N}(\mathcal{T})$ of a Gaussian quantum Markov semigroup on the von Neumann algebra $\mathcal{B}(Γ(\mathbb{C}^d))$ of all bounded operator on the Fock space $Γ(\mathbb{C}^d)$ on $\mathbb{C}^d$. We show that $\mathcal{N}(\mathcal{T})$ is a type I von Neumann algebra $L^\infty(\mathbb{R}^{d_c};\mathbb{C})\bar{\otimes}\mathcal{B}(Γ(\mathbb{C}^{d_f}))$ determined, up to unitary equivalence, by two natural numbers $d_c,d_f\leq d$. This result is illustrated by some applications and examples.
We propose a sequence of pulses intended to preserve the state of a qubit in the presence of strong, coherent coupling to another quantum system. The sequence can be understood as a generalized SWAP and works in formal analogy to the well-known spin echo. Since the resulting effective decoherence rate of the qubits state is strongly influenced by the additional system, this sequence might serve to protect its quantum state as well as negating the effects of the coherent coupling. A possible area of application are large scale quantum computing architectures, where spectral crowding of the reso…
We examine two exactly solvable models of decoherence -- a central spin-system, (i) with and (ii) without a self--Hamiltonian, interacting with a collection of environment spins. In the absence of a self--Hamiltonian we show that in this model (introduced some time ago to illustrate environment--induced superselection) generic assumptions about the coupling strengths can lead to a universal (Gaussian) suppression of coherence between pointer states. On the other hand, we show that when the dynamics of the central spin is dominant a different regime emerges, which is characterized by a non--Gau…
We investigate decoherence due to pure dephasing of a localized spin qubit interacting with a nuclear spin bath. Although in the limit of a very large magnetic field the only decoherence mechanism is spectral diffusion due to dipolar flip-flops of nuclear spins, with decreasing field the hyperfine-mediated interactions between the nuclear spins become important. We take advantage of their long-range nature, and resum the leading terms in an 1/N expansion of the decoherence time-evolution function (N, being the number of nuclear spins interacting appreciably with the electron spin, is large). F…
We investigate decoherence in quantum systems coupled via dephasing-type interactions to an arbitrary environment with chaotic underlying classical dynamics. The coherences of the reduced state of the central system written in the preferential energy eigenbasis are quantum Loschmidt echoes, which in the strong coupling regime are characterized at long times scales by fluctuations around a constant mean value. We show that due to the chaotic dynamics of the environment, the mean value and the width of the Loschmidt echo fluctuations are inversely proportional to the quantity we define as the ef…
Spin echo techniques are essential for achieving long coherence times in solid-state quantum memories for light because of inhomogeneous broadening of the spin transitions. It has been suggested that unrealistic levels of precision for the radio frequency control pulses would be necessary for successful decoherence control at the quantum level. Here we study the effects of pulse imperfections in detail, using both a semi-classical and a fully quantum-mechanical approach. Our results show that high efficiencies and low noise-to-signal ratios can be achieved for the quantum memories in the singl…
Coupling to a thermal bath leads to decoherence of stored quantum information. For a system of Gaussian fermions, the fermionic analog of linear or Gaussian optics, these dynamics can be elegantly and efficiently described by evolution of the system's covariance matrix. Taking both system and bath to be Gaussian fermionic, we observe that decoherence occurs at a rate that is independent of the bath temperature. Furthermore, we also consider a weak coupling regime where the dynamics are Markovian. We present a microscopic derivation of Markovian master equations entirely in the language of cova…
We present the design and characterization of a three-Josephson-junction superconducting loop circuit with three large shunt capacitors. Used as a qubit, the circuit shows long energy-relaxation times, of the order of 40 ${ \unicode[Times]{x3BC}}$s and a spin-echo dephasing time of 9.4 ${ \unicode[Times]{x3BC}}$s. The circuit has high anharmonicity, of 2$π$$\times$3.69 GHz. We extract the multilevel relaxation and dephasing rates of the circuit used as a qutrit and discuss the possible sources for the decoherence. The high anharmonicity allows for fast qubit control with nanosecond-range gate …
Developing quantum technologies requires the control and understanding of the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum information in many-body systems. Local information propagates in the system by creating complex correlations known as information scrambling, as this process prevents extracting the information from local measurements. In this work, we develop a model adapted from solid-state NMR methods, to quantify the information scrambling. The scrambling is measured via time-reversal Loschmidt echoes (LE) and Multiple Quantum Coherences experiments that intrinsically contain imperfections. Co…
Silicon is promising for spin-based quantum computation because nuclear spins, a source of magnetic noise, may be eliminated through isotopic enrichment. Long spin decoherence times, $T_2$, have been measured in isotope-enriched silicon but come far short of the $T_2 = 2 T_1$ limit. The effect of nuclear spins on $T_2$ is well established. However, the effect of background electron spins from ever present residual phosphorus impurities in silicon can also produce significant decoherence. We study spin decoherence decay as a function of donor concentration, $^{29}$Si concentration, and temperat…
We have studied the quantum dissipative problem of a Gaussian wave packet under the influence of a harmonic potential. A phenomenological approach to dissipation is adopted in the light of the well-known model in which the environment is composed of a bath of non-interacting harmonic oscillators. As one of the effects of the coupling to the bath is the evolution of an initially pure wave packet into a statistical mixture, we estimate the characteristic time elapsed for this to occur for different regimes of temperature, damping, and also different initial states.
We study the decay rate of the Loschmidt echo or fidelity in a chaotic system under a time-dependent perturbation $V(q,t)$ with typical strength $\hbar/τ_{V}$. The perturbation represents the action of an uncontrolled environment interacting with the system, and is characterized by a correlation length $ξ_0$ and a correlation time $τ_0$. For small perturbation strengths or rapid fluctuating perturbations, the Loschmidt echo decays exponentially with a rate predicted by the Fermi Golden Rule, $1/\tildeτ= τ_{c}/τ_{V}^2$, where typically $τ_{c} \sim \min[τ_{0},ξ_0/v]$ with $v$ the particle veloci…
The realisation of quantum computers based on molecular electronic spins requires the design of qubits with very long coherence times, T2. Dephasing can proceed over several different microscopic pathways, active at the same time and in different regimes. This makes the rationalisation of the dephasing process not straightforward. Here we present a computational methodology able to address spin decoherence processes for a general ensemble of spins. The method consists in the propagation of the unitary quantum spin dynamics on a reduced Hilbert space. Then we study the dependence of spin dephas…
