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arXiv:1506.03766 · Physical Review A

Robust dynamical decoupling sequences for individual-nuclear-spin addressing

Jorge Casanova, Z.-Y. Wang, Jan F. Haase, Martin Bodo Plenio

Published Oct 5, 2015• 84 citations
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Abstract

We propose the use of non-equally-spaced decoupling pulses for high-resolution selective addressing of nuclear spins by a quantum sensor. The analytical model of the basic operating principle is supplemented by detailed numerical studies that demonstrate the high degree of selectivity and the robustness against static and dynamic control-field errors of this scheme. We exemplify our protocol with a nitrogen-vacancy-center-based sensor to demonstrate that it enables the identification of individual nuclear spins that form part of a large spin ensemble.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.042304

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We propose the use of non-equally-spaced decoupling pulses for high-resolution selective addressing of nuclear spins by a quantum sensor. The analytical model of the basic operating principle is supplemented by detailed numerical studies that demonstrate the high degree of selectivity and the robustness against static and dynamic control-field errors of this scheme. We exemplify our protocol with a nitrogen-vacancy-center-based sensor to demonstrate that it enables the identification of individual nuclear spins that form part of a large spin ensemble.
Sensing, localizing, and identifying individual nuclear spins or frequency components of a signal in the presence of a noisy environment requires the development of robust and selective methods of dynamical decoupling. An important challenge that remains to be addressed in this context are spurious higher-order resonances in current dynamical decoupling sequences as they can lead to the misidentification of nuclei or of different frequency components of external signals. Here we overcome this challenge with engineered quantum sensing sequences that achieve both enhanced robustness and the simultaneous suppression of higher-order-harmonic resonances. We experimentally demonstrate the principle using a single nitrogen-vacancy center spin sensor which we apply to the unambiguous detection of external protons.
Dynamical decoupling (DD) is a powerful method for controlling arbitrary open quantum systems. In quantum spin control, DD generally involves a sequence of timed spin flips (π rotations) arranged to either average out or selectively enhance coupling to the environment. Experimentally, errors in the spin flips are inevitably introduced, motivating efforts to optimize error-robust DD. Here we invert this paradigm: by introducing particular control "errors" in standard DD, namely, a small constant deviation from perfect π rotations (pulse adjustments), we show we obtain protocols that retain the advantages of DD while introducing the capabilities of quantum state readout and polarization transfer. We exploit this nuclear quantum state selectivity on an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond to efficiently polarize the ^{13}C quantum bath. The underlying physical mechanism is generic and paves the way to systematic engineering of pulse-adjusted protocols with nuclear state selectivity for quantum control applications.
Current typical methods to realize nuclear-nuclear quantum gates require a sequence of electron-nuclear quantum gates by using dynamical decoupling techniques, which are implemented at low temperature because of the short decoherence and relaxation time of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) spin at room temperature. This limitation could be overcome by using periodic resets of an NV spin as a mediator of the interaction between two nuclear spins [Q. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 010801 (2017)]. However, this method works under stringent coupling strength conditions, which makes it not applicable to heteronuclear quantum gate operations. Here we develop this scheme by using radio-frequency fields to control different nuclear-spin species. Periodic resets of the NV center protect the nuclear spins from decoherence and relaxation of the NV spin. Radio-frequency control provides the probability to have highly selective and high-fidelity quantum gates between heteronuclear spins and detecting nuclear spins by using a nuclear-spin sensor under ambient conditions.
We develop theoretically and demonstrate experimentally a universal dynamical decoupling method for robust quantum sensing with unambiguous signal identification. Our method uses randomization of control pulses to simultaneously suppress two types of errors in the measured spectra that would otherwise lead to false signal identification. These are spurious responses due to finite-width π pulses, as well as signal distortion caused by π pulse imperfections. For the cases of nanoscale nuclear-spin sensing and ac magnetometry, we benchmark the performance of the protocol with a single nitrogen vacancy center in diamond against widely used nonrandomized pulse sequences. Our method is general and can be combined with existing multipulse quantum sensing sequences to enhance their performance.
High-fidelity control of quantum systems is crucial for quantum information processing, but is often limited by perturbations from the environment and imperfections in the applied control fields. Here, we investigate the combination of dynamical decoupling (DD) and robust optimal control (ROC) to address this problem. In this combination, ROC is employed to find robust shaped pulses, wherein the directional derivatives of the controlled dynamics with respect to control errors are reduced to a desired order. Then, we incorporate ROC pulses into DD sequences, achieving a remarkable improvement of robustness against multiple error channels. We demonstrate this method in the example of manipulating nuclear spin bath via an electron spin in the nitrogen-vacancy center system. Simulation results indicate that ROC-based DD sequences outperform the state-of-the-art robust DD sequences. Our work has implications for robust quantum control on near-term noisy quantum devices.