We analyze numerically the performance of the near-optimal quadratic dynamical decoupling (QDD) single-qubit decoherence errors suppression method [J. West et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 130501 (2010)]. The QDD sequence is formed by nesting two optimal Uhrig dynamical decoupling sequences for two orthogonal axes, comprising
N1 and
N2 pulses, respectively. Varying these numbers, we study the decoherence suppression properties of QDD directly by isolating the errors associated with each system basis operator present in the system-bath interaction Hamiltonian. Each individual error scales with the lowest order of the Dyson series, therefore immediately yielding the order of decoherence suppression. We show that the error suppression properties of QDD are dependent upon the parities of
N1 and
N2, and near-optimal performance is achieved for general single-qubit interactions when
N1=N2.
We introduce a high-order dynamical decoupling (DD) scheme for arbitrary bounded system-bath interactions in the weak-coupling regime. Given any decoupling group
G that averages the interaction to zero, our construction {guarantees the existence of pulse sequences with at most
(∣G∣−1)K pulses}, while canceling all error terms linear in the system-bath coupling strength up to order
K in the total evolution time. As a corollary, for an
n-qubit system with
k-local system-bath interactions, we obtain an
O(nk−1K)-pulse sequence, a significant improvement over existing schemes with
O(exp(n)) pulses (for
k=O(1)). The construction is obtained via a mapping to the continuous necklace-splitting problem, which asks how to cut a multi-colored interval into pieces that give each party the same share of every color. We provide explicit pulse sequences for suppressing general single-qubit decoherence, prove that the pulse count is asymptotically optimal, and verify the predicted error scaling in numerical simulations. For the same number of pulses, we observe that our sequences outperform the state-of-the-art Quadratic DD in the weak-coupling regime. We also construct explicit high-order sequences for suppressing representative 2-local noise models. Finally, the same construction extends to suppress slow, time-dependent classical noise and to filter-function design.
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 consider a system with general decoherence and a quadratic dynamical decoupling sequence (QDD) for the coherence control of a qubit coupled to a bath of spins. We investigate the influence of the geometry and of the initial conditions of the bath on the performance of the sequence. The overall performance is quantified by a distance norm
d. It is expected that
d scales with $\ensuremath{\tau}$, the total duration of the sequence, as ${\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\mathrm{min}{{N}_{x},{N}_{z}}+1}$, where
Nx and
Nz are the number of pulses of the outer and of the inner sequence, respectively. We show both numerically and analytically that the state of the bath can boost the performance of QDD under certain conditions: The scaling of QDD for a given number of pulses can be enhanced by a factor of 2 if the bath is prepared in a highly symmetric state and if the system Hamiltonian is SU(2) invariant.
Uhrig's dynamical decoupling pulse sequence has emerged as a 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 multilevel quantum systems. In particular, we show that by designing appropriate control Hamiltonians for a two-qubit or a multilevel system, Uhrig's pulse sequence can also preserve a generalized quantum coherence measure to the order of
1+O(TN+1) with only
N pulses. Our results lead to a very useful scheme for efficiently locking two-qubit entangled states. Future important applications of Uhrig's pulse sequence in preserving the quantum coherence of multilevel quantum systems can also be anticipated.
The optimal dynamical decoupling sequence for a qubit coupled to an Ohmic environment is investigated. By analytically computing the derivatives of the decoherence function, the optimal pulse locations are found to satisfy a set of nonlinear equations which can be easily solved. These equations incorporate the environment information such as the high-energy (UV) cutoff frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}$, giving a complete description of the decoupling process. The solutions explain previous experimental and theoretical results of locally optimized dynamical decoupling sequence in high-frequency-dominated environment, which were obtained by purely numerical computation and experimental feedback. As shown in numerical comparison, these solutions outperform the Uhrig dynamical decoupling sequence by one or more orders of magnitude in the Ohmic case.