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arXiv:2106.13705 · Physical Review A

Quantum optimal control of ten-level nuclear spin qudits in Sr 87

Sivaprasad Omanakuttan, Anupam Mitra, Michael J. Martin, Ivan Deutsch

Published Dec 16, 2021• 37 citations
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Abstract

We study the ability to implement unitary maps on states of the $I=9/2$ nuclear spin in $^{87}\mathrm{Sr}$, a $d=10$ dimensional (qudecimal) Hilbert space, using quantum optimal control. Through a combination of nuclear spin resonance and a tensor ac Stark shift, by solely modulating the phase of a radio-frequency magnetic field, the system is quantum controllable. Alkaline-earth-metal atoms, such as $^{87}\mathrm{Sr}$, have a very favorable figure of merit for such control due to narrow intercombination lines and the large hyperfine splitting in the excited states. We numerically study the quantum speed limit, optimal parameters, and the fidelity of arbitrary state preparation and full SU(10) maps, including the presence of decoherence due to optical pumping induced by the light-shifting laser. We also study the use of robust control to mitigate some dephasing due to inhomogeneities in the light shift. We find that with an rf Rabi frequency of ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{\text{rf}}$ and 0.5% inhomogeneity in the the light shift we can prepare an arbitrary Haar-random state in a time $T=4.5\ensuremath{\pi}/{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{\text{rf}}$ with average fidelity $\ensuremath{\langle}{\mathcal{F}}_{\ensuremath{\psi}}\ensuremath{\rangle}=0.9992$, and an arbitrary Haar-random SU(10) map in a time $T=24\ensuremath{\pi}/{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}}_{\text{rf}}$ with average fidelity $\ensuremath{\langle}{\mathcal{F}}_{U}\ensuremath{\rangle}=0.9923$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.l060401

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We study the ability to control ddd-dimensional quantum systems (qudits) encoded in the hyperfine spin of alkali-metal atoms through the application of radio- and microwave-frequency magnetic fields in the presence of inhomogeneities in amplitude and detuning. Such a capability is essential to the design of robust pulses that mitigate the effects of experimental uncertainty and also for application to tomographic addressing of particular members of an extended ensemble. We study the problem of preparing an arbitrary state in the Hilbert space from an initial fiducial state. We prove that inhomogeneous control of qudit ensembles is possible based on a semianalytic protocol that synthesizes the target through a sequence of alternating rf and microwave-driven SU(2) rotations in overlapping irreducible subspaces. Several examples of robust control are studied, and the semianalytic protocol is compared to a brute-force, full numerical search. For small inhomogeneities, <<<11%1, both approaches achieve average fidelities greater than 0.99, but the brute-force approach performs superiorly, reaching high fidelities in shorter times and capable of handling inhomogeneities well beyond experimental uncertainty. The full numerical search is also applied to tomographic addressing whereby two different nonclassical states of the spin are produced in two halves of the ensemble.
Optical nuclear electric resonance (ONER) was recently proposed as a fast and robust single-qubit gate mechanism in Sr 87 . Here, we demonstrate through numerical simulations that ONER can be extended to single-qudit control, addressing multiple one-level hyperfine transitions within the ten-dimensional nuclear-spin manifold. We identify suitable operating regimes and show that ONER enables high-fidelity spin manipulations, with simulated π-gate fidelities exceeding 99.9%, while maintaining coherence under realistic parameter fluctuations. These results establish a proof of principle for optical qudit control in Sr 87 and delineate practical parameter ranges for future experiments, highlighting ONER as a promising pathway toward high-dimensional quantum information processing.
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