Single-qubit quantum gates are implemented as the time-controlled unitary evolution of a two-level system under harmonic driving. The rotating-wave approximation (RWA) provides closed-form gate parameters for weak coupling. Larger amplitudes, desirable to speed up the dynamics, make the RWA-designed gates inaccurate because of the neglected counter-rotating term, which also shifts the resonance (Bloch-Siegert shift). Here we study theoretically the infidelity of gates beyond the RWA, using the effective Magnus-Taylor Hamiltonian through second order in the inverse of the driving frequency. By detuning the driving frequency by an amplitude-dependent shift of Bloch-Siegert type and rescaling the operation time, the RWA gate conditions are recovered with corrected parameters. Numerical solutions of the Schrodinger equation show that these corrections lower the gate infidelity by several orders of magnitude, extending the range of usable amplitudes
In many quantum platforms, single-qubit gates are applied using a linear drive resonant with the qubit transition frequency, which is often theoretically described within the rotating-wave approximation (RWA). However, for fast gates on low-frequency qubits, the RWA may not hold and we need to consider the contribution from counterrotating terms to the qubit dynamics. The inclusion of counterrotating terms into the theoretical description gives rise to two challenges. First, it becomes challenging to analytically calculate the time evolution as the Hamiltonian is no longer self-commuting. Moreover, the time evolution now depends on the carrier phase such that, in general, every operation in a sequence of gates is different. In this work, we derive and verify a correction to the drive pulses that minimizes the effect of these counterrotating terms in a two-level system. We then derive a second correction term that arises from noncomputational levels for a strongly anharmonic system. We experimentally implement these correction terms on a fluxonium superconducting qubit, which is an example of a strongly anharmonic, low-frequency qubit for which the RWA may not hold, and demonstrate how fast, high-fidelity single-qubit gates can be achieved without the need for additional hardware and calibration complexities.
Quantum information processing comprises physical processes, which obey the quantum speed limit (QSL): high speed requires strong driving. Single-qubit gates using Rabi oscillation, which is based on the rotating wave approximation (RWA), satisfy this bound in the form that the gate time
T is inversely proportional to the Rabi frequency
Ω, characterizing the driving strength. However, if the gate time is comparable or shorter than the qubit period
T0≡2π/ω0, the RWA actually breaks down since the Rabi frequency has to be large compared to the qubit frequency
ω0 due to the QSL, which is given as
T≳π/Ω. We show that it is possible to construct a universal set of single-qubit gates at this strong-coupling and ultrafast regime, by adjusting the central frequency
ω and the Rabi frequency
Ω of the driving pulse. We observe a transition in the scaling behavior of the central frequency from the long-gate time regime (
T≫T0) to the short-gate time (
T≪T0) regime. In the former, the central frequency is nearly resonant to the qubit, i.e.,
ω≃ω0, whereas in the latter, the central frequency is inversely proportional to the gate time, i.e.,
ω∼π/T. We identify the transition gate time at which the scaling exponent
n of the optimal central frequency
ω∼Tn changes from
n=0 to
n=−1.
Abstract Fast and accurate quantum operations of a single spin in room-temperature solids are required in many modern scientific areas, for instance in quantum information, quantum metrology, and magnetometry. However, the accuracy is limited if the Rabi frequency of the control is comparable with the transition frequency of the qubit due to the breakdown of the rotating wave approximation (RWA). We report here an experimental implementation of a control method based on quantum optimal control theory which does not suffer from such restriction. We demonstrate the most commonly used single qubit rotations, i.e. - and π-pulses, beyond the RWA regime with high fidelity and , respectively. They are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions, and . Furthermore, we perform two basic magnetic resonance experiments both in the rotating and the laboratory frames, where we are able to deliberately ‘switch’ between the frames, to confirm the robustness of our control method. Our method is general, hence it may immediately find its wide applications in magnetic resonance, quantum computing, quantum optics, and broadband magnetometry.
The benefit of exchange-only qubits compared to other spin-qubit types is the universal control using only voltage-controlled exchange interactions between neighboring spins. As a compromise, qubit operations have to be constructed from nonorthogonal rotation axes of the Bloch sphere and result in rather long pulsing sequences. This paper aims to develop a faster implementation of single-qubit gates using simultaneous exchange pulses and manifests their potential for the construction of two-qubit gates. We introduce pulse sequences in which single-qubit gates could be executed faster and show that subsequences on three spins in two-qubit gates could be implemented in fewer steps. Our findings can particularly speed up gate sequences for realistic idle times between sequential pulses and we show that this advantage increases with more interconnectivity of the quantum dots. We further demonstrate how a phase operation can introduce a relative phase between the computational and some of the leakage states, which can be advantageous for the construction of two-qubit gates. In addition to our theoretical analysis, we experimentally demonstrate and characterize a simultaneous exchange implementation of X rotations in a Si Ge quantum dot device and compare to the state of the art with sequential exchange pulses.
The applicability and performance of qubits dressed by classical fields are limited because their control protocols give rise to an undesired counter-rotating term (CRT). This in turn forces operation in a regime where a (dressed) rotating-wave approximation (RWA) is valid, thereby restricting key aspects of their operation. Here, using only a single coupling axis in the laboratory frame, we introduce a dressed-qubit control protocol that optimally removes the CRT, eliminating the need for the RWA and delivering substantial improvements in multiple performance metrics, including single-qubit gate speed, two-qubit gate fidelity, spectroscopic range, clock stability, and coherence preservation. In addition, we provide a general parameterization together with a Floquet-based coherence-time expression, which elucidates the protocol's working principles and lowers the barrier to adoption. Collectively, these advances position our scheme as the state-of-the-art strategy for qubit control, paving the way for a wider class of quantum technologies to be realized using dressed-qubit architectures.