When a quantum system is driven slowly through a parametric cycle in a degenerate Hilbert space, the state would acquire a non-Abelian geometric phase, which is stable and forms the foundation for holonomic quantum computation (HQC). However, in the adiabatic limit, the environmental decoherence becomes a significant source of errors. Recently, various nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) schemes have been proposed, but all at the price of increased sensitivity to control errors. Alternatively, there exist theoretical proposals for speeding up HQC by the technique of "shortcut to adiabaticity" (STA), but no experimental demonstration has been reported so far, as these proposals involve a complicated control of four energy levels simultaneously. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate that HQC via shortcut to adiabaticity can be constructed with only three energy levels, using a superconducting qubit in a scalable architecture. With this scheme, all holonomic single-qubit operations can be realized nonadiabatically through a single cycle of state evolution. As a result, we are able to experimentally benchmark the stability of STA+HQC against NHQC in the same platform. The flexibility and simplicity of our scheme makes it also implementable on other systems, such as nitrogen-vacancy center, quantum dots, and nuclear magnetic resonance. Finally, our scheme can be extended to construct two-qubit holonomic entangling gates, leading to a universal set of STAHQC gates.
When a quantum system is driven slowly through a parametric cycle in a degenerate Hilbert space, the state would acquire a non-Abelian geometric phase, which is stable and forms the foundation for holonomic quantum computation (HQC). However, in the adiabatic limit, the environmental decoherence becomes a significant source of errors. Recently, various nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) schemes have been proposed, but all at the price of increased sensitivity to control errors. Alternatively, there exist theoretical proposals for speeding up HQC by the technique of "shortcut to adiabaticity" (STA), but no experimental demonstration has been reported so far, as these proposals involve a complicated control of four energy levels simultaneously. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate that HQC via shortcut to adiabaticity can be constructed with only three energy levels, using a superconducting qubit in a scalable architecture. With this scheme, all holonomic single-qubit operations can be realized nonadiabatically through a single cycle of state evolution. As a result, we are able to experimentally benchmark the stability of STA+HQC against NHQC in the same platform. The flexibility and simplicity of our scheme makes it also implementable on other systems, such as nitrogen-vacancy center, quantum dots, and nuclear magnetic resonance. Finally, our scheme can be extended to construct two-qubit holonomic entangling gates, leading to a universal set of STAHQC gates.
Based on the geometrical nature of quantum phases, non-adiabatic holonomic quantum control (NHQC) has become a standard technique for enhancing robustness in constructing quantum gates. However, the conventional approach of NHQC is sensitive to control instability, as it requires the driving pulses to cover a fixed pulse area. Furthermore, even for small-angle rotations, all operations need to be completed with the same duration of time. Here we experimentally demonstrate a time-optimal and unconventional approach of NHQC (called TOUNHQC), which can optimize the operation time of any holonomic gate. Compared with the conventional approach, TOUNHQC provides an extra layer of robustness to decoherence and control errors. The experiment involves a scalable architecture of superconducting circuit, where we achieved a fidelity of 99.51% for a single qubit gate using interleaved randomized benchmarking. Moreover, a two-qubit holonomic control-phase gate has been implemented where the gate error can be reduced by as much as 18% compared with NHQC.
Quantum computation has been shown to be superior to classical computation in solving some problems, and therefore can substantially change our life. However, the realization of quantum computation is still challenging, even if quantum technologies have been improved significantly. Two main obstacles to the realization of practical quantum computation are control errors and decoherence. Control errors are caused by inaccurate manipulations of quantum systems and decoherence is caused by the inevitable interaction between the system and its environment. Geometric phases are only dependent on evolution paths of quantum systems but independent of the evolution details and therefore quantum computation based on geometric phases, i.e., geometric quantum computation, is robust against control errors, benefiting the realization of practical quantum computation. The early proposals of geometric quantum computation are based on adiabatic geometric phases. These proposals require quantum systems to undergo adiabatic evolution, which makes quantum systems evolve for a long time. To circumvent this, nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation based on nonadiabatic Abelian geometric phases was proposed soon after. In 2012, nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation based on nonadiabatic non-Abelian geometric phases was proposed, which also circumvents long-time evolutions. Moreover, compared with nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation that uses the geometric phase as one parameter of a quantum gate, nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation uses the holonomic matrix itself as a quantum gate. This makes nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation possess whole-geometric property. Due to the merits of both geometric robustness and high-speed implementation without the limit of adiabatic evolution, nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation has been attracting much attention. Until now, much progress has been achieved in the field of nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation. On one hand, various methods have been proposed to design more efficient nonadiabatic holonomic gates. Nonadiabatic holonomic gates were first realized by using resonant laser fields to drive a three-level system. After this, the single-shot proposal and the single-loop proposal were proposed, allowing us to realize one-qubit gates by a shorter path and thereby reducing the exposure time of nonadiabatic holonomic gates to the environment. To further shorten the exposure time, the path-shortening protocol was put forward, where nonadiabatic holonomic gates can be realized based on a class of extended evolution paths that are shorter than the former ones. Recently, a general approach of constructing Hamiltonians for nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation was put forward, by using which one can easily find a Hamiltonian making the quantum system evolve along a desired path so that nonadiabatic holonomic gates can be realized with an economical evolution time. On the other hand, various methods have been proposed to combine nonadiabatic holonomic gates and various decoherence-resilient methods, making the resulting schemes robust against both control errors and decoherence. The first proposal in this aspect is combining nonadiabatic holonomic gates and decoherence-free subspaces. Gradually, proposals combining nonadiabatic holonomic gates with noiseless subsystems, dynamical decoupling and surface codes were put forward. Last but not least, various proposals suitable for specific physical systems have been proposed and particularly various experimental platforms have been used to demonstrate nonadiabatic holonomic gates. This also significantly improves the development of nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation. In this paper, we review the above research advances on nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation, aiming to help readers understand the main developments of nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation.
Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) is implemented by fast evolution processes in a geometric way to withstand local noises. However, recent works of implementing NHQC are sensitive to the systematic noise and error. Here, we present a path-optimized NHQC (PONHQC) scheme based on the non-Abelian geometric phase, and find that a geometric gate can be constructed by different evolution paths, which have different responses to systematic noises. Due to the flexibility of the PONHQC scheme, we can choose an optimized path that can lead to excellent gate performance. Numerical simulation shows that our optimized scheme can greatly outperform the conventional NHQC scheme, in terms of both fidelity and robustness of the gates. In addition, we propose to implement our strategy on superconducting quantum circuits with decoherence-free subspace encoding with the experiment-friendly two-body exchange interaction. Therefore, we present a flexible NHQC scheme that is promising for the future robust quantum computation.
Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) provides an essential way to construct robust and high-fidelity quantum gates due to its geometric features. However, NHQC is more sensitive to decay and dephasing errors than a conventional dynamical gate since it requires an ancillary intermediate state. Here, we utilize the Hamiltonian reverse engineering technique to study the influence of intermediate-state decoherence on NHQC gate fidelity, and propose schemes to construct an arbitrary single-qubit holonomic gate and nontrivial two-qubit holonomic gate with high fidelity and robustness to the decoherence. Although the proposed method is generic and can be applied to many experimental platforms, such as superconducting qubits, trapped ions, and quantum dots, here we take a nitrogen-vacancy center as an example to show that the gate fidelity can be significantly enhanced from 89% to 99.6% in contrast to recent experimental NHQC schemes [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 140503 (2017); Nat. Photonics 11, 309 (2017); Opt. Lett. 43, 2380 (2018)], and the robustness against decoherence can also be significantly improved. All in all, our scheme provides a promising way for fault-tolerant geometric quantum computation.
High-fidelity quantum gates are essential for large-scale quantum computation. However, any quantum manipulation will inevitably affected by noises, systematic errors and decoherence effects, which lead to infidelity of a target quantum task. Therefore, implementing high-fidelity, robust and fast quantum gates is highly desired. Here, we propose a fast and robust scheme to construct high-fidelity holonomic quantum gates for universal quantum computation based on resonant interaction of three-level quantum systems via shortcuts to adiabaticity. In our proposal, the target Hamiltonian to induce noncyclic non-Abelian geometric phases can be inversely engineered with less evolution time and demanding experimentally, leading to high-fidelity quantum gates in a simple setup. Besides, our scheme is readily realizable in physical system currently pursued for implementation of quantum computation. Therefore, our proposal represents a promising way towards fault-tolerant geometric quantum computation.
Nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation (NHQC) based on non-Abelian geometric phases can possess potential robustness advantages due to its intrinsic error-resilient features. However, rigorous geometric conditions, including cyclic evolution and parallel transport conditions, typically demand complex and error-prone control and also involve additional auxiliary resources. Moreover, the limitations of optional evolution paths in previous NHQC schemes make it difficult to avoid path segments that are heavily affected by systematic errors, thereby weakening the error resilience of holonomic gates. To address this problem, we propose a multipath NHQC scheme, which can sufficiently improve the robustness of quantum gates by flexibly correcting geometric evolution paths. Numerical simulation results show that our scheme surpasses previous NHQC schemes in suppressing systematic errors for arbitrary gate types. In addition, we provide a physical implementation based on superconducting quantum circuits, with the decoherence-free-subspace encoding and an experiment-friendly two-body exchange interaction, demonstrating the excellent compatibility of our scheme. Therefore, our scheme offers a promising alternative for future fault-tolerant quantum computation.