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arXiv:1805.10879 · New Journal of Physics

Experimental demonstration of work fluctuations along a shortcut to adiabaticity with a superconducting Xmon qubit

Zhenxing Zhang, Tenghui Wang, Liang Xiang, Zhi-Long Jia, Peng Duan, Weizhou Cai, Ze Zhan, Zhiwen Zong, Jianlan Wu, Luyan Sun, Yi Yin, Guo‐Ping Guo

Published Jul 20, 2018• 45 citations
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Abstract

In a 'shortcut to adiabaticity' (STA) protocol, the counter-diabatic Hamiltonian, which suppresses the non-adiabatic transition of a reference 'adiabatic' trajectory, induces a quantum uncertainty of the work cost in the framework of quantum thermodynamics. Following a theory derived recently (Funo et al 2017 Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 100602), we perform an experimental measurement of the STA work statistics in a high-quality superconducting Xmon qubit. Through the frozen-Hamiltonian and frozen-population techniques, we experimentally realize the two-point measurement of the work distribution for given initial eigenstates. Our experimental statistics verify (i) the conservation of the average STA work and (ii) the equality between the STA excess of work fluctuations and the quantum geometric tensor.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/aad4e7

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In a 'shortcut to adiabaticity' (STA) protocol, the counter-diabatic Hamiltonian, which suppresses the non-adiabatic transition of a reference 'adiabatic' trajectory, induces a quantum uncertainty of the work cost in the framework of quantum thermodynamics. Following a theory derived recently (Funo et al 2017 Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 100602), we perform an experimental measurement of the STA work statistics in a high-quality superconducting Xmon qubit. Through the frozen-Hamiltonian and frozen-population techniques, we experimentally realize the two-point measurement of the work distribution for given initial eigenstates. Our experimental statistics verify (i) the conservation of the average STA work and (ii) the equality between the STA excess of work fluctuations and the quantum geometric tensor.
Based on a 'shortcut-to-adiabaticity' (STA) scheme, we theoretically design and experimentally realize a set of high-fidelity single-qubit quantum gates in a superconducting Xmon qubit system. Through a precise microwave control, the qubit is driven to follow a fast 'adiabatic' trajectory with the assistance of a counter-diabatic field and the correction of derivative removal by adiabatic gates. The experimental measurements of quantum process tomography and interleaved randomized benchmarking show that the process fidelities of our STA quantum gates are higher than 94.9% and the gate fidelities are higher than 99.8%, very close to the state-of-art gate fidelity of 99.9%. An alternate of high-fidelity quantum gates is successfully achieved under the STA protocol.
With a counter-diabatic field supplemented to the reference control field, the `shortcut to adiabaticiy' (STA) protocol is implemented in a superconducting phase qubit. The Berry phase measured in a short time scale is in good agreement with the theoretical result acquired from an adiabatic loop. The trajectory of a qubit vector is extracted, verifying the Berry phase alternatively by the integrated solid angle. The classical noise is introduced to the amplitude or phase of the total control field. In the statistics of the Berry phase, the mean with either noise is almost equal to that without noise, while the variation with the amplitude noise can be described by an analytical expression.
Quantum work statistics differ from classical ones because initial energy coherence matters. The standard two-point measurement (TPM) gives a positive distribution but erases phase information. Coherence-retaining endpoint-work quasistatistics provide a compact probe of shortcut-to-adiabaticity performance. For work defined with respect to a reference Hamiltonian, an exact counterdiabatic shortcut pulls the final reference Hamiltonian back to an operator diagonal in the initial energy basis. Endpoint Kirkwood-Dirac or Margenau-Hill quasistatistics then lose sensitivity to initial coherence and reduce to the TPM result. Imperfect shortcuts restore this sensitivity: a non-commuting control error produces off-diagonal pulled-back Hamiltonian elements at first order in the error amplitude, whereas population-only transition probabilities change only at second order. Harmonic-oscillator and qubit benchmarks confirm this linear-versus-quadratic contrast. The result complements inclusive work-cost analyses: it does not measure the auxiliary field's energetic cost, but provides a phase-sensitive endpoint diagnostic of residual nonadiabaticity.
In quantum information processing, the shortcut-to-adiabaticity (STA) protocol has been proposed to accelerate a system's adiabatic evolution by introducing an additional, counterdiabatic Hamiltonian. This protocol is particularly suitable for realizing the controlled-ZZZ ($C\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}Z$) gate, but a counterdiabatic Hamiltonian requires a variable, complex coupling of qubits. By introducing a representation transformation and a rescaling method, this work uses the STA protocol to obtain a high-fidelity $C\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}Z$ gate with two coupled transmon qubits. This method affords high flexibility in the evolution time and control waveform, and is expected to be directly useful in other quantum systems as well.
Open quantum systems described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian exhibit rich dynamics due to the topology of their complex energy spectrum. By encircling an exceptional point degeneracy, this topology allows for topological state transport, chiral geometric phases, and eigenvalue braiding. To access these topological features, it is desirable to drive the system adiabatically. However, adiabatic transport in a system with a complex spectrum is conventionally only possible for the eigenstate whose eigenenergy has the lowest loss. Previous experiments have demonstrated such adiabatic evolution for the quantum state with relative gain, yet observed a breakdown in adiabaticity for quantum states with relative loss. In this work, we harness a shortcut to adiabaticity—counterdiabatic driving—to avoid the effects of loss while maintaining trajectories that follow the instantaneous eigenstates in significantly shorter timescales. We experimentally investigate the robustness of this control method using a superconducting transmon circuit with engineered dissipation. We observe that counterdiabatic driving stabilizes quasistatic transport and preserves the complex energy spectrum’s topology.
The central quantity in the celebrated quantum Jarzynski equality is ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}W}$, where WWW is work and $\ensuremath{\beta}$ is the inverse temperature. The impact of quantum randomness on the fluctuations of ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}W}$ and hence on the predictive power of the Jarzynski estimator is an important problem. Working on a single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond and riding on an implementation of the two-point measurement of nonequilibrium work with single-shot readouts, we have conducted a direct experimental investigation of the relationship between the fluctuations of ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}W}$ and adiabaticity of nonequilibrium work protocols. It is observed that adiabatic processes minimize the variance of ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}W}$, thus verifying an early theoretical concept, the so-called principle of minimal work fluctuations. Furthermore, it is experimentally demonstrated that shortcuts-to-adiabaticity control can be exploited to minimize the variance of ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}W}$ in fast work protocols. Our work should stimulate further experimental studies of quantum effects on the bias and error in the estimates of free-energy differences based on the Jarzynski equality.