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arXiv:1207.6881 · Physical Review Letters

Noise Spectroscopy Using Correlations of Single-Shot Qubit Readout

T. Fink, Hendrik Bluhm

Published Jan 2, 2013• 27 citations
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Abstract

A better understanding of the noise causing qubit decoherence is crucial for improving qubit performance. The noise spectrum affecting the qubit may be extracted by measuring dephasing under the application of pulse sequences but requires accurate qubit control and sufficiently long relaxation times, which are not always available. Here, we describe an alternative method to extract the spectrum from correlations of single-shot measurement outcomes of successive free induction decays. This method only requires qubit initialization and readout with a moderate fidelity and also allows independent tuning of both the overall sensitivity and the frequency region over which it is sensitive. Thus, it is possible to maintain a good detection contrast over a very wide frequency range. We discuss using our method for measuring both 1/f noise and the fluctuation spectrum of the nuclear bath of GaAs spin qubits.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.110.010403

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A better understanding of the noise causing qubit decoherence is crucial for improving qubit performance. The noise spectrum affecting the qubit may be extracted by measuring dephasing under the application of pulse sequences but requires accurate qubit control and sufficiently long relaxation times, which are not always available. Here, we describe an alternative method to extract the spectrum from correlations of single-shot measurement outcomes of successive free induction decays. This method only requires qubit initialization and readout with a moderate fidelity and also allows independent tuning of both the overall sensitivity and the frequency region over which it is sensitive. Thus, it is possible to maintain a good detection contrast over a very wide frequency range. We discuss using our method for measuring both 1/f noise and the fluctuation spectrum of the nuclear bath of GaAs spin qubits.
We introduce Single-Shot Cross-Spectroscopy (SSCS), a method for extracting the auto- and cross-power spectral densities of dephasing noise in a qubit pair. The method uses straightforward input, namely, single-shot readouts from single-qubit Ramsey-type experiments, without requiring the reconstruction of qubit energy fluctuations from repeated measurements, and is resilient against errors in state preparation and measurement. We apply it to experimental data from a semiconductor spin-qubit device and obtain noise spectra over five orders of magnitude in frequency (5 mHz–500 Hz). Compared to other techniques, for spin qubits, SSCS enables access to noise correlations in the previously inaccessible intermediate-frequency range (1–500 Hz), and can be further extended with faster readout. The method is directly applicable to other qubit platforms, and the upper frequency it can probe is set by the repetition rate of a single-qubit preparation and measurement.
Qubit noise spectroscopy is an important tool for the experimental investigation of open quantum systems. However, conventional techniques for noise spectroscopy are time-consuming, because they require measurements of the noise spectral density at many different frequencies. Here we describe an alternative approach to noise spectroscopy, which requires fewer resources, and relies on direct measurement of arbitrary linear functionals of the noise spectral density. This method uses random pulse sequences with carefully controlled correlations, which are chosen using algorithms for phase retrieval. These measurements allow us to reconstruct sparse noise spectra via compressed sensing. Our simulations of the performance of the random pulse sequences on a realistic physical system, self-assembled quantum dots, reveal a speedup of an order of magnitude in extracting the noise spectrum, compared to conventional dynamical decoupling approaches.
We present a resource-efficient method based on repetitive weak measurements to directly measure the noise spectrum of a generic quantum environment that causes qubit phase decoherence. The weak measurement is induced by a Ramsey interferometry measurement (RIM) on the qubit and periodically applied during the free evolution of the environment. We prove that the measurement correlation of such repetitive RIMs approximately corresponds to a direct sampling of the noise correlation function, thus enabling direct noise spectroscopy of the environment. Compared to dynamical-decoupling-based noise spectroscopy, this method can efficiently measure the full noise spectrum with the detected frequency range not limited by qubit coherence time. This method is also more resource-efficient than the correlation spectroscopy, as for the same detection accuracy with NNN sampling times, it takes total detection time O(N)O(N)O(N) while the latter one takes time O(N2)O(N^2)O(N2). We numerically demonstrate this method for both bosonic and spin baths.
Abstract Spectral characterization of noise environments that lead to the decoherence of qubits is critical to developing robust quantum technologies. While dynamical decoupling offers one of the most successful approaches to characterize noise spectra, it necessitates applying large sequences of π pulses that increase the complexity and cost of the method. Here, we introduce a noise spectroscopy method that utilizes only the Fourier transform of free induction decay or spin echo measurements, thus removing the need for the application many π pulses. We show that our method faithfully recovers the correct noise spectra for a variety of different environments (including 1/f-type noise) and outperforms previous dynamical decoupling schemes while significantly reducing their experimental overhead. We also discuss the experimental feasibility of our proposal and demonstrate its robustness in the presence of statistical measurement error. Our method is applicable to a wide range of quantum platforms and provides a simpler path toward a more accurate spectral characterization of quantum devices, thus offering possibilities for tailored decoherence mitigation.
We propose a general method to characterize classical stochastic noise causing qubit dephasing through repetitive Ramsey interferometry measurements (RIMs) on the qubit. Compared to filter-function-based spectroscopy, our method with simpler pulse control is less constrained by probe coherence time and can directly detect arbitrary-order correlation functions of quasistatic noise processes. We show that each RIM with a short evolution time and suitably chosen control pulses directly samples the noise field and the nnn-point correlations of the RIM outcomes are proportional to the nnn-point correlation functions of the noise processes. We demonstrate the method numerically for two representative cases: an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Gaussian process and a non-Gaussian ensemble of two-level fluctuators. While practical constraints such as readout contrast and sampling cost persist, our method offers a direct route to quasistatic classical noise spectroscopy across diverse platforms.
We report a direct measurement of the low-frequency noise spectrum in a superconducting flux qubit. Our method uses the noise sensitivity of a free-induction Ramsey interference experiment, comprising free evolution in the presence of noise for a fixed period of time followed by single-shot qubit-state measurement. Repeating this procedure enables Fourier-transform noise spectroscopy with access to frequencies up to the achievable repetition rate, a regime relevant to dephasing in ensemble-averaged time-domain measurements such as Ramsey interferometry. Rotating the qubit's quantization axis allows us to measure two types of noise: effective flux noise and effective critical-current or charge noise. For both noise sources, we observe that the very same 1/f1/f1/f-type power laws measured at considerably higher frequencies ($0.2\ensuremath{-}20$ MHz) are consistent with the noise in the $0.01\ensuremath{-}100$-Hz range measured here. We find no evidence of temperature dependence of the noises over $65\ensuremath{-}200$ mK, and also no evidence of time-domain correlations between the two noises. These methods and results are pertinent to the dephasing of all superconducting qubits.