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arXiv:2103.08506 · New Journal of Physics

Designing arbitrary single-axis rotations robust against perpendicular time-dependent noise

Bikun Li, F. A. Calderon-Vargas, Junkai Zeng, Edwin Barnes

Published Sep 1, 2021• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Low-frequency time-dependent noise is one of the main obstacles on the road toward a fully scalable quantum computer. The majority of solid-state qubit platforms, from superconducting circuits to spins in semiconductors, are greatly affected by 1/f noise. Among the different control techniques used to counteract noise effects on the system, dynamical decoupling sequences are one of the most effective. However, most dynamical decoupling sequences require unbounded and instantaneous pulses, which are unphysical and can only implement identity operations. Among methods that do restrict to bounded control fields, there remains a need for protocols that implement arbitrary gates with lab-ready control fields. In this work, we introduce a protocol to design bounded and continuous control fields that implement arbitrary single-axis rotations while shielding the system from low-frequency time-dependent noise perpendicular to the control axis. We show the versatility of our method by presenting a set of non-negative-only control pulses that are immediately applicable to quantum systems with constrained control, such as singlet-triplet spin qubits. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of our control pulses against classical 1/f noise and noise modeled with a random quantum bath, showing that our pulses can even outperform ideal dynamical decoupling sequences.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ac22ea

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Abstract Low-frequency time-dependent noise is one of the main obstacles on the road toward a fully scalable quantum computer. The majority of solid-state qubit platforms, from superconducting circuits to spins in semiconductors, are greatly affected by 1/f noise. Among the different control techniques used to counteract noise effects on the system, dynamical decoupling sequences are one of the most effective. However, most dynamical decoupling sequences require unbounded and instantaneous pulses, which are unphysical and can only implement identity operations. Among methods that do restrict to bounded control fields, there remains a need for protocols that implement arbitrary gates with lab-ready control fields. In this work, we introduce a protocol to design bounded and continuous control fields that implement arbitrary single-axis rotations while shielding the system from low-frequency time-dependent noise perpendicular to the control axis. We show the versatility of our method by presenting a set of non-negative-only control pulses that are immediately applicable to quantum systems with constrained control, such as singlet-triplet spin qubits. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of our control pulses against classical 1/f noise and noise modeled with a random quantum bath, showing that our pulses can even outperform ideal dynamical decoupling sequences.
Many solid-state qubit systems are afflicted by low-frequency noise mechanisms that operate along two perpendicular axes of the Bloch sphere. Depending on the qubit control fields, either noise can be longitudinal or transverse to the quantization axis of the qubit, thus affecting its dynamics in distinct ways, generally contributing to decoherence that goes beyond pure dephasing. Here, we present a theory that provides a unified platform to study dynamics of a qubit subjected to two perpendicular low-frequency noises (assumed to be Gaussian and uncorrelated) under dynamical decoupling pulse sequences. The theory is demonstrated by the commonly encountered case of power law noise spectra, where approximate analytical results can be obtained.
We introduce a method for designing smooth single-qubit control pulses that implement a desired gate while suppressing the effect of unknown static error sources to first order. Unlike dynamically corrected gate constructions that require prior knowledge of the noise model, the present approach is agnostic to the detailed form of the target-bath interaction. The method parametrizes the control propagator through an auxiliary matrix expansion over orthogonal basis functions and enforces decoupling through algebraic orthogonality and equal-norm constraints on the expansion coefficients. These conditions guarantee that the leading Magnus contribution of an arbitrary static interaction reduces to a term proportional to the identity on the target system, thereby cancelling first-order error effects independently of the microscopic origin of the noise. We further show that the same construction suppresses, to first order, mediated couplings between simultaneously controlled qubits when their interaction occurs through intermediate environmental degrees of freedom, yielding effective second-order decoupling of the induced inter-qubit interaction. By using a discrete cosine transform parametrization, the pulse-synthesis problem is cast into a numerically stable constrained optimization with a minimal number of free parameters. Numerical examples for RzR_zRz​ rotations and random single-qubit unitaries demonstrate smooth control fields that realize the target gates while remaining robust against arbitrary static single-qubit noise and mediated multi-qubit couplings. These results provide a hardware-friendly route toward noise-agnostic dynamically corrected single-qubit gates.
The main obstacles to implementing ideal quantum operations are unwanted interactions of quantum systems with the environment and noise in control fields. This problem can be tackled by methods of quantum control. Among these methods are \ncomposite pulse (CP) sequences which have long been employed in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to mitigate the effects of systematic errors in the control. CP sequences have been initially developed to correct for static but otherwise unknown \nerrors in the amplitude or frequency of the driving field. One of the challenges to the systematic incorporation of these control protocols into practical quantum information systems remains the limited understanding of CP performance in the presence \nof time-dependent noise. Treating the influence of time-dependent noise processes on quantum control operations has been facilitated by recent advances in dynamical \nerror suppression based on open-loop Hamiltonian engineering. These approaches provide a general framework for understanding and mitigating non-Markovian time- \ndependent noise in a finite-dimensional open quantum system. Particularly, arbitrary single-qubit control characteristics may be captured quantitatively in filter-transfer \nfunctions (FF) using methods of spectral overlap in the frequency domain. In this thesis work, we present a systematic study of control pulse sequences in the presence of time-dependent noise. We use a combination of analytic formulations based on FFs and numerical simulations to demonstrate that CPs are able to effectively suppress control errors caused by time-dependent processes possessing realistic noise \npower spectra. We provide a geometric interpretation of CP performance under time-dependent amplitude noise, further linking the FF formalism with known techniques in CP construction. We also develop new optimized pulse sequences that act as notch filters for time-dependent noise. These high-fidelity control protocols effectively sup- \npress errors from the noise sources with sharp features in spectral densities and can be used practically on various quantum architectures. We also present our work \non simulation of randomized benchmarking protocols and CPs that have been used experimentally by our collaborators to measure gate errors.
We address the experimentally relevant problem of robust mitigation of dephasing noise acting on a qubit. We first present an extension of the method of Kuopanportti et al. [Phys. Rev. A 77, 032334 (2008)] for representing $1/{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ noise to the efficient representation of arbitrary Markovian noise. We then add qubit control pulses to enable the design of numerically optimized, two-dimensional, bounded amplitude control functions capable of decoupling the qubit from the dephasing effects of a broad variety of Markovian noise spectral densities during one- and two-qubit quantum operations. We illustrate the method with development of numerically optimized control pulse sequences that minimize decoherence due to a combination of $1/\ensuremath{\omega}$ and constant-offset noise sources. Comparison with the performance of standard dynamical decoupling protocols shows that the numerically optimized pulse sequences are considerably more robust with respect to zero-frequency noise. Application to the mitigation of dephasing noise on spin qubits in silicon indicates that high-fidelity quantum gates may, in principle, be implemented for such qubits with the assistance of current pulse-generation technology.
Spin qubits are very valuable and scalable candidates in the area of quantum computation and simulation applications. In the last decades, they have been deeply investigated from a theoretical point of view and realized on the scale of few devices in the laboratories. In semiconductors, spin qubits can be built confining the spin of electrons in electrostatically defined quantum dots. Through this approach, it is possible to create different implementations: single electron spin qubit, singlet–triplet spin qubit, or a three-electron architecture, e.g., the hybrid qubit. For each qubit type, we study the single qubit rotations along the principal axis of Bloch sphere including the mandatory non-idealities of the control signals that realize the gate operations. The realistic transient of the control signal pulses are obtained by adopting an appropriate low-pass filter function. In addition. the effect of disturbances on the input signals is taken into account by using a Gaussian noise model.
We present a comprehensive theoretical treatment of supcode, a method for generating dynamically corrected quantum gate operations, which are immune to random noise in the environment, by using carefully designed sequences of soft pulses. supcode enables dynamical error suppression even when the control field is constrained to be positive and uniaxial, making it particularly suited to counteracting the effects of noise in systems subject to these constraints such as singlet-triplet qubits. We describe and explain in detail how to generate supcode pulse sequences for arbitrary single-qubit gates and provide several explicit examples of sequences that implement commonly used gates, including the single-qubit Clifford gates. We develop sequences for noise-resistant two-qubit gates for two exchange-coupled singlet-triplet qubits by cascading robust single-qubit gates, leading to a 35% reduction in gate time compared to previous works. This cascade approach can be scaled up to produce gates for an arbitrary-length spin qubit array and is thus relevant to scalable quantum computing architectures. To more accurately describe real spin qubit experiments, we show how to design sequences that incorporate additional features and practical constraints such as sample-specific charge noise models and finite pulse rise times. We provide a detailed analysis based on randomized benchmarking to show how supcode gates perform under realistic $1/{f}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ noise and find a strong dependence of gate fidelity on the exponent $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, with best performance for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>1$. Our supcode sequences can therefore be used to implement robust universal quantum computation while accommodating the fundamental constraints and experimental realities of singlet-triplet qubits.