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arXiv:1909.09947 · npj Quantum Information

Error suppression in adiabatic quantum computing with qubit ensembles

Naeimeh Mohseni, Marek Narożniak, Alexey N. Pyrkov, Valentin Ivannikov, Jonathan P. Dowling, Tim Byrnes

Published May 10, 2021• 18 citations
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Abstract

Abstract Incorporating protection against quantum errors into adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is an important task due to the inevitable presence of decoherence. Here, we investigate an error-protected encoding of the AQC Hamiltonian, where qubit ensembles are used in place of qubits. Our Hamiltonian only involves total spin operators of the ensembles, offering a simpler route towards error-corrected quantum computing. Our scheme is particularly suited to neutral atomic gases where it is possible to realize large ensemble sizes and produce ensemble-ensemble entanglement. We identify a critical ensemble size Nc where the nature of the first excited state becomes a single particle perturbation of the ground state, and the gap energy is predictable by mean-field theory. For ensemble sizes larger than Nc, the ground state becomes protected due to the presence of logically equivalent states and the AQC performance improves with N, as long as the decoherence rate is sufficiently low.

DOI
10.1038/s41534-021-00405-2

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Abstract Incorporating protection against quantum errors into adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is an important task due to the inevitable presence of decoherence. Here, we investigate an error-protected encoding of the AQC Hamiltonian, where qubit ensembles are used in place of qubits. Our Hamiltonian only involves total spin operators of the ensembles, offering a simpler route towards error-corrected quantum computing. Our scheme is particularly suited to neutral atomic gases where it is possible to realize large ensemble sizes and produce ensemble-ensemble entanglement. We identify a critical ensemble size Nc where the nature of the first excited state becomes a single particle perturbation of the ground state, and the gap energy is predictable by mean-field theory. For ensemble sizes larger than Nc, the ground state becomes protected due to the presence of logically equivalent states and the AQC performance improves with N, as long as the decoherence rate is sufficiently low.
In the standard approach to adiabatic quantum computing (AQC), quantum information stored on qubits are adia- batically evolved to find the lowest energy state of a problem Hamiltonian. Here we investigate a variation of AQC where spin ensembles are used in place of qubits. The use of ensembles duplicates the quantum information, and allows errors to be suppressed during the adiabatic evolution. We show that there are two distinct types of problem Hamiltonians under this mapping, where the first excited state is a single particle perturbation on the ground state (Type I); or a macroscopically distinct fully polarized state (Type II). For Type I problems, we find that the minimum gap for large ensembles is well predicted by mean-field theory and the AQC performance improves with ensemble size, realizing error-suppression. For Type II problems, the performance of the AQC is mixed, and the gap can increase or decrease with ensemble size depending on the problem instance. The incidences of the Type II problems are greatly suppressed with ensemble size, and consequently for randomly chosen problem instances the success probability of the scheme improves with the ensemble size. Our approach shows that it is possible to perform AQC without the necessity of controlling individual qubits, which allows for an alternative route towards implementing AQC.
While adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) has some robustness to noise and decoherence, it is widely believed that encoding, error suppression and error correction will be required to scale AQC to large problem sizes. Previous works have established at least two different techniques for error suppression in AQC. In this paper we derive a model for describing the dynamics of encoded AQC and show that previous constructions for error suppression can be unified with this dynamical model. In addition, the model clarifies the mechanisms of error suppression and allows the identification of its weaknesses. In the second half of the paper, we utilize our description of non-equilibrium dynamics in encoded AQC to construct methods for error correction in AQC by cooling local degrees of freedom (qubits). While this is shown to be possible in principle, we also identify the key challenge to this approach: the requirement of high-weight Hamiltonians. Finally, we use our dynamical model to perform a simplified thermal stability analysis of concatenated-stabilizer-code encoded many-body systems for AQC or quantum memories. This work is a companion paper to 'Error suppression and error correction in adiabatic quantum computation: techniques and challenges (2013 Phys. Rev. X 3 041013)', which provides a quantum information perspective on the techniques and limitations of error suppression and correction in AQC. In this paper we couch the same results within a dynamical framework, which allows for a detailed analysis of the non-equilibrium dynamics of error suppression and correction in encoded AQC.
While adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) possesses some intrinsic robustness to noise, it is expected that a form of error control will be necessary for large scale computations. Error control ideas developed for circuit-model quantum computation do not transfer easily to the AQC model and to date there have been two main proposals to suppress errors during an AQC implementation: energy gap protection and dynamical decoupling. Here we show that these two methods are essentially equivalent and can be analyzed within the same formalism. We analyze the effectiveness of such error suppression techniques and identify critical constraints on the performance of error suppression in AQC, suggesting that error suppression by itself is insufficient for fault-tolerant, large-scale AQC and that a form of error correction is needed.
Adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) can be protected against thermal excitations via an encoding into error-detecting codes, supplemented with an energy penalty formed from a sum of commuting Hamiltonian terms. Earlier work showed that it is possible to suppress the initial thermally induced excitation out of the encoded ground state, in the case of local Markovian environments, by using an energy-penalty strength that grows only logarithmically in system size, at a fixed temperature. The question of whether this result applies beyond the initial time was left open. Here we answer this in the affirmative. We show that thermal excitations out of the encoded ground state can be suppressed at arbitrary times under the additional assumption that the total evolution time is polynomial in the system size. Thus, computational problems that can be solved efficiently by using AQC in a closed system setting can still be solved efficiently subject to coupling to a thermal environment. Our construction uses stabilizer subspace codes, which require at least 4-local interactions to achieve this result.
Hamiltonian quantum computing, such as the adiabatic and holonomic models, can be protected against decoherence using an encoding into stabilizer subspace codes for error detection and the addition of energy penalty terms. This method has been widely studied since it was first introduced by Jordan, Farhi, and Shor (JFS) in the context of adiabatic quantum computing. Here, we extend the original result to general Markovian environments, not necessarily in Lindblad form. We show that the main conclusion of the original JFS study holds under these general circumstances: Assuming a physically reasonable bath model, it is possible to suppress the initial decay out of the encoded ground state with an energy penalty strength that grows only logarithmically in the system size, at a fixed temperature.