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arXiv:1011.4463 · Physical Review A

Control-free control: Manipulating a quantum system using only a limited set of measurements

Sahel Ashhab, Franco Nori

Published Dec 6, 2010• 60 citations
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Abstract

We present and discuss different protocols for preparing an arbitrary quantum state of a qubit using only a restricted set of measurements, with no unitary operations at all. We show that an arbitrary state can indeed be prepared, provided that the available measurements satisfy certain requirements. Our results shed light on the role that measurement-induced back-action plays in quantum feedback control and the extent to which this back-action can be exploited in quantum-control protocols.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.82.062103

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We present and discuss different protocols for preparing an arbitrary quantum state of a qubit using only a restricted set of measurements, with no unitary operations at all. We show that an arbitrary state can indeed be prepared, provided that the available measurements satisfy certain requirements. Our results shed light on the role that measurement-induced back-action plays in quantum feedback control and the extent to which this back-action can be exploited in quantum-control protocols.
A qubit which is prepared in one of two non-orthogonal states and subjected to bit-flipping noise is considered. The objective is to use measurement and feedback control to correct the state of the qubit. Three classical schemes using projective measurements, i.e. discrimination and re-preparation, do nothing and random preparation, have been discussed, and are not optimal with respect to a performance which is quantified by the average fidelity of the corrected state compared to the initial state. In addition, one quantum scheme using a non-projective measurement with an optimum measurement strength achieves the best trade-off between gaining information about the system and disturbing it through measurement back-action. The performance of a quantum control scheme outperforms the classical schemes. Furthermore, no universal corrected scheme is discussed.
The advance of experimental techniques in circuit quantum electrodynamics over last decadehas made it possible to monitor the evolution of qubits under continuous measurements in\nreal time . This kind of measurements, as compared to the discrete ones, provides a stream\nof information for feedback to alter the system's quantum dynamics continuously in a desired\nmanner, thus allowing broader possibilities. We obtain the information at a cost, the backaction on the states. However, the back-action turns out not to be just something disturbing \nand harmful to the control but instead can be harnessed, together with the control, to steer the system to our targets. \nThis thesis discusses one such application, namely to use measurements to create entanglement from remote qubits under locally optimal control. It is illustrated that by carefully designing symmetric measurement and feedback operators, we can construct efficient Markovian or non-Markovian protocols which generate N-qubit W,\ngeneral Dicke and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with high fidelity above 94% up to\nN = 100. In some cases, the fidelity even approaches unity. Following that, we describe how\nto take advantages of the continuous stream of information to protect the unitary dynamics of\na quantum system subject to noises. We develop a practical protocol for continuous operation\nof a quantum error correcting code for protection of coherent evolution due to an encoded\nHamiltonian against environmental errors, using the three qubit bit-flip code and bit-flip\nerrors as a canonical example. We demonstrate, for both quantum memory and adiabatic\nHamiltonians, that the protocol, once optimized, can significantly reduce logical errors with\na performance which is close to the theoretical limit of the bit-flip code's capability. In the\nadiabatic Hamiltonian case, we also propose some novel correction operators instead of the\nconventional ones to further reduce the logical errors.
A goal of the emerging field of quantum control is to develop methods for quantum technologies to function robustly in the presence of noise. Central issues are the fundamental limitations on the available information about quantum systems and the disturbance they suffer in the process of measurement. In the context of a simple quantum control scenario-the stabilization of nonorthogonal states of a qubit against dephasing-we experimentally explore the use of weak measurements in feedback control. We find that, despite the intrinsic difficultly of implementing them, weak measurements allow us to control the qubit better in practice than is even theoretically possible without them. Our work shows that these more general quantum measurements can play an important role for feedback control of quantum systems.
We propose a general scheme for dissipatively preparing arbitrary pure quantum states on a multipartite qubit register in a finite number of basic control blocks. Our “splitting-subspace” approach relies on control resources that are available in a number of scalable quantum technologies (complete unitary control on the target system, an ancillary resettable qubit and controlled-not gates between the target and the ancilla), and can be seen as a “quantum-controller” implementation of a sequence of classical feedback loops. We show how a large degree of flexibility exists in engineering the required conditional operations, and make explicit contact with a stabilization protocol used for dissipative quantum state preparation and entanglement generation in recent experiments with trapped ions.