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arXiv:0803.4320 · Physical Review A

Rigorous bounds on the performance of a hybrid dynamical-decoupling quantum-computing scheme

Kaveh Khodjasteh, Daniel A. Lidar

Published Jul 29, 2008• 50 citations
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Abstract

We study dynamical decoupling in a multiqubit setting, where it is combined with quantum logic gates. This is illustrated in terms of computation using Heisenberg interactions only, where global decoupling pulses commute with the computation. We derive a rigorous error bound on the trace distance or fidelity between the desired computational state and the actual time-evolved state, for a system subject to coupling to a bounded-strength bath. The bound is expressed in terms of the operator norm of the effective Hamiltonian generating the evolution in the presence of decoupling and logic operations. We apply the bound to the case of periodic pulse sequences and find that in order to maintain a constant trace distance or fidelity, the number of cycles---at fixed pulse interval and width---should scale in inverse proportion to the square of the number of qubits. This sets a scalability limit on the protection of quantum computation using periodic dynamical decoupling.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.012355

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We study dynamical decoupling in a multiqubit setting, where it is combined with quantum logic gates. This is illustrated in terms of computation using Heisenberg interactions only, where global decoupling pulses commute with the computation. We derive a rigorous error bound on the trace distance or fidelity between the desired computational state and the actual time-evolved state, for a system subject to coupling to a bounded-strength bath. The bound is expressed in terms of the operator norm of the effective Hamiltonian generating the evolution in the presence of decoupling and logic operations. We apply the bound to the case of periodic pulse sequences and find that in order to maintain a constant trace distance or fidelity, the number of cycles---at fixed pulse interval and width---should scale in inverse proportion to the square of the number of qubits. This sets a scalability limit on the protection of quantum computation using periodic dynamical decoupling.
We present rigorous performance bounds for the quadratic dynamical decoupling pulse sequence which protects a qubit from general decoherence, and for its nested generalization to an arbitrary number of qubits. Our bounds apply under the assumptions of instantaneous pulses and of bounded perturbing environment and qubit-environment Hamiltonians such as those realized by baths of nuclear spins in quantum dots. We prove that if the total sequence time is fixed then the trace-norm distance between the unperturbed and protected system states can be made arbitrarily small by increasing the number of applied pulses.
We present rigorous performance bounds for the optimal dynamical decoupling pulse sequence protecting a quantum bit (qubit) against pure dephasing. Our bounds apply under the assumption of instantaneous pulses and of bounded perturbing environment and qubit-environment Hamiltonians such as those realized by baths of nuclear spins in quantum dots. We show that if the total sequence time is fixed the optimal sequence can be used to make the distance between the protected and unperturbed qubit states arbitrarily small in the number of applied pulses. If, on the other hand, the minimum pulse interval is fixed and the total sequence time is allowed to scale with the number of pulses, then longer sequences need not always be advantageous. The rigorous bound may serve as a testbed for approximate treatments of optimal decoupling in bounded models of decoherence.
We study how dynamical decoupling (DD) pulse sequences can improve the reliability of quantum computers. We prove upper bounds on the accuracy of DD-protected quantum gates and derive sufficient conditions for DD-protected gates to outperform unprotected gates. Under suitable conditions, fault-tolerant quantum circuits constructed from DD-protected gates can tolerate stronger noise and have a lower overhead cost than fault-tolerant circuits constructed from unprotected gates. Our accuracy estimates depend on the dynamics of the bath that couples to the quantum computer and can be expressed either in terms of the operator norm of the bath's Hamiltonian or in terms of the power spectrum of bath correlations; we explain in particular how the performance of recursively generated concatenated pulse sequences can be analyzed from either viewpoint. Our results apply to Hamiltonian noise models with limited spatial correlations.
Quantum computation (QC) relies on the ability to implement high-fidelity quantum gate operations and successfully preserve quantum state coherence. One of the most challenging obstacles for reliable QC is overcoming the inevitable interaction between a quantum system and its environment. Unwanted interactions result in decoherence processes that cause quantum states to deviate from a desired evolution, consequently leading to computational errors and loss of coherence. Dynamical decoupling (DD) is one such method, which seeks to attenuate the effects of decoherence by applying strong and expeditious control pulses solely to the system. Provided the pulses are applied over a time duration sufficiently shorter than the correlation time associated with the environment dynamics, DD effectively averages out undesirable interactions and preserves quantum states with a low probability of error, or fidelity loss. In this study various aspects of this approach are studied from sequence construction to applications of DD to protecting QC. First, a comprehensive examination of the error suppression properties of a near-optimal DD approach is given to understand the relationship between error suppression capabilities and the number of required DD control pulses in the case of ideal, instantaneous pulses. While such considerations are instructive for examining DD efficiency, i.e., performance vs the number of control pulses, high-fidelity DD in realizable systems is difficult to achieve due to intrinsic pulse imperfections which further contribute to decoherence. As a second consideration, it is shown how one can overcome this hurdle and achieve robustness and recover high-fidelity DD in the presence of faulty control pulses using Genetic Algorithm optimization and sequence symmetrization. Thirdly, to illustrate the implementation of DD in conjunction with QC, the utilization of DD and quantum error correction codes (QECCs) as a protection method for adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is discussed. A performance comparison between two deterministic DD schemes is given, where preference towards one particular method is found due to sequence structure and procedure from which higher accuracy sequences are generated.
Dynamical decoupling can be used to preserve arbitrary quantum states despite undesired interactions with the environment, using control Hamiltonians affecting the system only. We present a system-independent analysis of dynamical decoupling based on leading order decoupling error estimates, valid for bounded-strength environments. Using as a key tool a renormalization transformation of the effective system-bath coupling Hamiltonian, we delineate the reliability domain of dynamical decoupling used for quantum state preservation, in a general setting for a single qubit. We specifically analyze and compare two deterministic dynamical decoupling schemes---periodic and concatenated---and distinguish between two limiting cases of fast versus slow environments. We prove that concatenated decoupling outperforms periodic decoupling over a wide range of parameters. These results are obtained for both ``ideal'' (zero-width) and realistic (finite-width) pulses This work extends and generalizes our earlier work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 180501 (2005)].
We obtain an upper bound on the time available for quantum computation for a given quantum computer and decohering environment with quantum error correction implemented. First, we derive an explicit quantum evolution operator for the logical qubits and show that it has the same form as that for the physical qubits but with a reduced coupling strength to the environment. Using this evolution operator, we find the trace distance between the real and ideal states of the logical qubits in two cases. For a super-Ohmic bath, the trace distance saturates, while for Ohmic or sub-Ohmic baths, there is a finite time before the trace distance exceeds a value set by the user.