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arXiv:2005.07169 · New Journal of Physics

Experimental quantum decoherence control by dark states of the environment

Robert Stárek, Michal Mičuda, Ivo Straka, Martina Nováková, Miloslav Dušek, Miroslav Ježek, Jaromír Fiurášek, Radim Filip

Published Sep 1, 2020• 7 citations

Abstract

Abstract Coherent interaction of a quantum system with environment usually induces quantum decoherence. However, remarkably, in certain configurations the coherent system–environment coupling can be simultaneously explored to engineer a specific dark state of the environment that eliminates the decoherence. Here we report on experimental demonstration of such protocol for suppression of quantum decoherence by quantum decoherence itself. The protocol is based on indirect control of the environment via quantum measurements on quantum probes interacting with the environment prior to the system that should be protected. No direct manipulation with the environment is required to suppress the decoherence. In our proof-of-principle experiment, we demonstrate protection of a single qubit coupled to another single qubit. We implement the required quantum circuits with linear optics and single photons, which allows us to maintain very high degree of control and flexibility in the experiment. Our results clearly confirm the decoherence suppression achieved by the protocol and pave the way to its application to other physical platforms.

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/abb47d

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Decoherence is an unavoidable effect of the quantum system coupled to an environment, which leads to the system evolving from a pure state to a mixed one. A critical issue here is that the reduction of purity is quantum or classical, which corresponds to whether or not entanglement is generated between the system and environment. We report a proof-of-principle experimental investigation of such entanglement in a simple but paradigmatic case, in which a qubit system interacts with a pure dephasing channel. The pure dephasing process is realized in a linear photonic system, and the experiment is a validation in a very controlled setting. By adopting previous methods to detect qubit-environment entanglement, we prove that such entanglement can be detected by performing local measurements on only one subsystem, even when the other subsystem in the pair cannot be detected. Our experiment paves the way for investigating features of open quantum system dynamics.

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Dynamical decoupling (DD) sequences were invented to eliminate the direct coupling between a qubit and its environment. We further investigate the possibility of decoupling the indirect qubit–qubit interaction induced by a common environment, and successfully find simplified solutions that preserve the bipartite quantum states to arbitrary order. Through analysing the exact dynamics of the controlled two-qubit density matrix, we have proven that applying independent Uhrig DD (UDD) on each qubit will effectively eliminate both the qubit–environment and indirect qubit–qubit couplings to the same order as in the single-qubit case, only if orders of the two UDD sequences have different parities. More specifically, UDD( n ) on one qubit with UDD( m ) on another are able to produce min ( n , m )th-order suppression while n + m is odd. Our results can be used to reduce the pulse number in relevant experiments for protecting bipartite quantum states, or dynamically manipulating the indirect interaction within a certain quantum gate and quantum bus.