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arXiv:1101.0024 · Physical Review A

Dynamical decoupling of qubits in a spin bath under periodic quantum control

Jun-Ting Kao, Jo-Tzu Hung, Pochung Chen, Chung‐Yu Mou

Published Dec 29, 2010• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the feasibility for the preservation of coherence and entanglement of one- and two-spin qubits coupled to an interacting quantum spin-1/2 chain within the dynamical decoupling (DD) scheme. The performance is examined by counting the number of computing pulses that can be applied periodically with periods of $T$ before qubits become decoherent, while an identical decoupling pulse sequence is applied within each cycle. By considering pulses with mixed directions and finite width controlled by magnetic fields, it is shown that pulse-width accumulation degrades the performance of sequences with larger numbers of pulses and that feasible magnetic fields in practice restrict consideration to sequences with few than 10 decoupling pulses within each cycle. Furthermore, within each cycle $T$, exact nontrivial pulse sequences are found to suppress the qubit-bath coupling to $O({T}^{N+1})$ progressively with the minimum number of pulses being 4, 7, and 12 for $N=1,2,3$. These sequences, when applied to all qubits, are shown to preserve both the entanglement and coherence. Based on time-dependent density matrix renormalization, our numerical results show that for modest magnetic fields (10--40 T) available in laboratories, the overall performance is optimized when the number of pulses in each cycle is 4 or 7 with pulse directions alternating between $x$ and $z$. Our results provide useful guides for the preservation of coherence and entanglement of spin qubits in the solid state.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.82.062120

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We investigate the feasibility for the preservation of coherence and entanglement of one- and two-spin qubits coupled to an interacting quantum spin-1/2 chain within the dynamical decoupling (DD) scheme. The performance is examined by counting the number of computing pulses that can be applied periodically with periods of TTT before qubits become decoherent, while an identical decoupling pulse sequence is applied within each cycle. By considering pulses with mixed directions and finite width controlled by magnetic fields, it is shown that pulse-width accumulation degrades the performance of sequences with larger numbers of pulses and that feasible magnetic fields in practice restrict consideration to sequences with few than 10 decoupling pulses within each cycle. Furthermore, within each cycle TTT, exact nontrivial pulse sequences are found to suppress the qubit-bath coupling to O(TN+1)O({T}^{N+1})O(TN+1) progressively with the minimum number of pulses being 4, 7, and 12 for N=1,2,3N=1,2,3N=1,2,3. These sequences, when applied to all qubits, are shown to preserve both the entanglement and coherence. Based on time-dependent density matrix renormalization, our numerical results show that for modest magnetic fields (10--40 T) available in laboratories, the overall performance is optimized when the number of pulses in each cycle is 4 or 7 with pulse directions alternating between xxx and zzz. Our results provide useful guides for the preservation of coherence and entanglement of spin qubits in the solid state.
Avoiding the loss of coherence of quantum mechanical states is an important prerequisite for quantum information processing. Dynamical decoupling (DD) is one of the most effective experimental methods for maintaining coherence, especially when one can access only the qubit system and not its environment (bath). It involves the application of pulses to the system whose net effect is a reversal of the system-environment interaction. In any real system, however, the environment is not static, and therefore the reversal of the system-environment interaction becomes imperfect if the spacing between refocusing pulses becomes comparable to or longer than the correlation time of the environment. The efficiency of the refocusing improves therefore if the spacing between the pulses is reduced. Here, we quantify the efficiency of different DD sequences in preserving different quantum states. We use 13C^{13}\mathrm{C}13C nuclear spins as qubits and an environment of 1H^{1}\mathrm{H}1H nuclear spins as the environment, which couples to the qubit via magnetic dipole-dipole couplings. Strong dipole-dipole couplings between the proton spins result in a rapidly fluctuating environment with a correlation time of the order of 100 $\ensuremath{\mu}$s. Our experimental results show that short delays between the pulses yield better performance if they are compared with the bath correlation time. However, as the pulse spacing becomes shorter than the bath correlation time, an optimum is reached. For even shorter delays, the pulse imperfections dominate over the decoherence losses and cause the quantum state to decay.
Dynamical decoupling (DD) eliminates qubit-bath coupling by applying a sequence of instantaneous pulses. While qubit-bath couplings generally lead to qubit relaxation and dephasing, qubit-qubit couplings are often used to manipulate or control quantum states. We investigate the available control operations in two DD schemes, named periodic DD (PDD) and Uhrig DD (UDD), to see whether universal quantum computation can be realized in these decoupled systems. We find that universal control is possible using Heisenberg interaction in both periodically decoupled system and Uhrig decoupled system, and the available control operations under two kinds of DD sequences obey the same commutation relation. In the UDD case, we also derive a rough bound for control errors.
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 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 ddd. It is expected that ddd scales with $\ensuremath{\tau}$, the total duration of the sequence, as ${\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\mathrm{min}{{N}_{x},{N}_{z}}+1}$, where Nx{N}_{x}Nx​ and Nz{N}_{z}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.
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.
The coherence time of an electron spin decohered by the nuclear spin environment in a quantum dot can be substantially increased by subjecting the electron to suitable dynamical decoupling sequences. We analyze the performance of high-level decoupling protocols by using a combination of analytical and exact numerical methods, and by paying special attention to the regimes of large interpulse delays and long-time dynamics, which are outside the reach of standard average Hamiltonian theory descriptions. We demonstrate that dynamical decoupling can remain efficient far beyond its formal domain of applicability, and find that a protocol exploiting concatenated design provides best performance for this system in the relevant parameter range. In situations where the initial electron state is known, protocols able to completely freeze decoherence at long times are constructed and characterized. The impact of system and control nonidealities is also assessed, including the effect of intrabath dipolar interaction, magnetic field bias and bath polarization, as well as systematic pulse imperfections. While small bias field and small bath polarization degrade the decoupling fidelity, enhanced performance and temporal modulation result from strong applied fields and high polarizations. Overall, we find that if the relative errors of the control pulse flip angles do not exceed 3%, decoupling protocols can still prolong the coherence time by up to 2 orders of magnitude.