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arXiv:1210.2860 · Physical Review Letters

Dissipation-Assisted Quantum Information Processing with Trapped Ions

A. Bermúdez, Tobias Schaetz, Martin Bodo Plenio

Published Mar 14, 2013• 62 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We introduce a scheme to perform dissipation-assisted quantum information processing in ion traps considering realistic decoherence rates, for example, due to motional heating. By means of continuous sympathetic cooling, we overcome the trap heating by showing that the damped vibrational excitations can still be exploited to mediate coherent interactions as well as collective dissipative effects. We describe how to control their relative strength experimentally, allowing for protocols of coherent or dissipative generation of entanglement. This scheme can be scaled to larger ion registers for coherent or dissipative many-body quantum simulations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.110.110502

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We introduce a scheme to perform dissipation-assisted quantum information processing in ion traps considering realistic decoherence rates, for example, due to motional heating. By means of continuous sympathetic cooling, we overcome the trap heating by showing that the damped vibrational excitations can still be exploited to mediate coherent interactions as well as collective dissipative effects. We describe how to control their relative strength experimentally, allowing for protocols of coherent or dissipative generation of entanglement. This scheme can be scaled to larger ion registers for coherent or dissipative many-body quantum simulations.
Entangled states are a key resource in fundamental quantum physics, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation. In this thesis, we focus on the demonstrations of two novel methods to generate entanglement. First, we implement dissipative production of a maximally entangled steady state on two trapped ions. Dissipative and coherent processes are combined and implemented in a continuous time-independent fashion, analogous to optical pumping of atomic states, continuously driving the system towards the steady entangled state. With this method, we obtain a Bell state fidelity up to 0.89(2). Second, we propose and demonstrate a novel coherent process to confine quantum evolution in a subspace between an initial separable state and the target entangled state. We demonstrate this scheme on two and three ions obtaining a Bell state fidelity up to 0.992(2). Both of these methods are robust against certain types of experimental noise and decoherence. Additionally, we demonstrate sympathetic cooling of ion chains to near the ground\nstate of motion with an electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) method. This results in roughly an order of magnitude faster cooling time while using significantly lower laser power compared to the conventional resolved sideband cooling method. These techniques may be helpful for scaled-up quantum computing.
We present protocols for dissipative entanglement of three trapped-ion qubits and discuss a scheme that uses sympathetic cooling as the dissipation mechanism. This scheme relies on tailored destructive interference to generate any one of six entangled W states in a three-ion qubit space. Using a beryllium–magnesium ion crystal as an example system, we theoretically investigate the protocol's performance and the effects of likely error sources, including thermal secular motion of the ion crystal, calibration imperfections, and spontaneous photon scattering. We estimate that a fidelity of ~98% may be achieved in typical trapped ion experiments with ~1 ms interaction time. These protocols avoid timescale hierarchies for faster preparation of entangled states.
We investigate high frequency motional states of trapped atomic ions. Trapped ions in rf traps are confined by an approximate harmonic potential and exhibit quantum motional states that mediate essential techniques in quantum computing, simulation, networking, and precision measurement. However, motional state decoherence mechanisms, heating and dephasing, are broadly limiting: reduced two-qubit gate fidelities; lower fidelity and lifetime of highly nonclassical bosonic states; long laser cooling times; and large recoil heating rates. These also challenge the scalability of increasingly sophisticated protocols. We propose high motional frequency ion trapping as an operating regime that addresses these challenges and reshapes the design landscape for quantum information experiments and quantum control techniques. We report an experimentally motivated investigation of realizing this high-frequency regime and discuss the consequences for laser cooling, motional state coherence, fidelity and lifetime of nonclassical bosonic states, and scalability of experimental runtimes. We report clear design trajectories for ion traps to reach high motional frequency, a new limiting mechanism for laser cooling at these high frequencies, and more than an order-of-magnitude speedup in experimental duty cycles with larger speed ups possible for quantum error correction protocols. Taken together, high motional frequency ion trapping has broad implications for the future of quantum information experiments.
We propose a series of dissipation-assisted entanglement generation protocols that can be implemented on a trapped-ion quantum simulator. Our approach builds on the single-site molecular electron transfer (ET) model recently realized in the experiment [So et al. Sci. Adv. 10, eads8011 (2024)]. This model leverages spin-dependent boson displacement and dissipation controlled by sympathetic cooling. We show that, when coupled to external degrees of freedom, the ET model can be used as a dissipative quantum control mechanism, enabling the precise tailoring of both spin and phonon steady state of a target sub-system. We derive simplified analytical formalisms that offer intuitive insights into the dissipative dynamics. Using realistic interactions in a trapped-ion system, we develop a protocol for generating NNN-qubit and NNN-boson WWW states. Additionally, we generalize this protocol to realize generic NNN-qubit Dicke states with tunable excitation numbers. Finally, we outline a realistic experimental setup to implement our schemes in the presence of noise sources.
Abstract We present protocols for dissipative entanglement of three trapped-ion qubits and discuss a scheme that uses sympathetic cooling as the dissipation mechanism. This scheme relies on tailored destructive interference to generate any one of six entangled W states in a three-ion qubit space. Using a beryllium–magnesium ion crystal as an example system, we theoretically investigate the protocol’s performance and the effects of likely error sources, including thermal secular motion of the ion crystal, calibration imperfections, and spontaneous photon scattering. We estimate that a fidelity of ∼98% may be achieved in typical trapped ion experiments with ∼1 ms interaction time. These protocols avoid timescale hierarchies for faster preparation of entangled states.