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arXiv:2210.11891 · Physical Review A

Theory of qubit noise characterization using the long-time cavity transmission

Philipp M. Mutter, Guido Burkard

Published Feb 1, 2023• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Noise-induced decoherence is one of the main threats to large-scale quantum computation. In an attempt to assess the noise affecting a qubit, we go beyond the standard steady-state solution of the transmission through a qubit-coupled cavity in input-output theory by including dynamical noise in the description of the system. We solve the quantum Langevin equations exactly for a noise-free system and treat the noise as a perturbation. In the long-time limit the corrections may be written as a sum of convolutions of the noise power spectral density with an integration kernel that depends on external control parameters. Using the convolution theorem, we invert the corrections and obtain relations for the noise spectral density as an integral over measurable quantities. Additionally, we treat the noise exactly in the dispersive regime and again find that noise characteristics are imprinted in the long-time transmission in convolutions containing the power spectral density.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.107.022601

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Noise-induced decoherence is one of the main threats to large-scale quantum computation. In an attempt to assess the noise affecting a qubit, we go beyond the standard steady-state solution of the transmission through a qubit-coupled cavity in input-output theory by including dynamical noise in the description of the system. We solve the quantum Langevin equations exactly for a noise-free system and treat the noise as a perturbation. In the long-time limit the corrections may be written as a sum of convolutions of the noise power spectral density with an integration kernel that depends on external control parameters. Using the convolution theorem, we invert the corrections and obtain relations for the noise spectral density as an integral over measurable quantities. Additionally, we treat the noise exactly in the dispersive regime and again find that noise characteristics are imprinted in the long-time transmission in convolutions containing the power spectral density.
Noise affects the coherence of qubits and thereby places a bound on the performance of quantum computers. We theoretically study a generic two-level system with fluctuating control parameters in a photonic cavity and find that basic features of the noise spectral density are imprinted in the transient transmission through the cavity. We obtain analytical expressions for generic noise and proceed to study the cases of quasistatic, white and 1/f^{α} noise in more detail. Additionally, we propose a way of extracting the noise power spectral density in a frequency band only bounded by the range of the qubit-cavity detuning and with an exponentially decaying error due to finite measurement times. Our results suggest that measurements of the time-dependent transmission probability represent a novel way of extracting noise characteristics.
A significant challenge in the field of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation is the influence of noise. In addition to the influence of noise on individual qubits, the smaller additional effect of noise correlations is also of high significance because correlated errors pose a challenge for quantum error correction. We describe the dynamics of two cavity-coupled qubits that are subject to correlated noise, assuming that the qubits are affected by longitudinal noise and not coupled directly. We find that the cavity emission enables the characterization of the noise correlations and describe the cases of white noise, quasi-static noise, and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise. For a known frequency spectrum, the reconstruction of the noise correlation spectral density from the cavity emission is possible by averaging over many different noise realizations. We demonstrate that, in the case of white noise, the noise correlation effects scale with the fifth order of the cavity-qubit coupling constant and are thus strongly suppressed compared with the case of quasi-static noise, where they scale with the third order. Furthermore, we present a method for extracting the noise correlation spectral density from the cavity emission in the case where the underlying noise type remains unidentified. This can be achieved by applying the convolution theorem.
We investigate qubit entanglement dynamics in a two-qubit cavity system with stochastically fluctuating coupling strength, comparing white noise (Markovian) and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise (non-Markovian) processes. We analytically solve the system dynamics for both Fock and coherent cavity states and systematically characterize how initial qubit configurations affect entanglement generation and preservation. Our results reveal distinct dynamical regimes: in the Fock-state cavity, initial states in the single-excitation subspace generate robust qubit entanglement in decoherence-free subspaces, while initially entangled states in the double-excitation subspace exhibit inevitable decay without protective symmetries. For coherent cavities, we identify a critical photon-number threshold in the intermediate coherent-state amplitude regime where dynamics transition from low-frequency to high-frequency entanglement oscillations, while universal entanglement loss occurs at large amplitudes. Remarkable resilience against entanglement sudden death emerges under strong non-Markovian noise with long correlation times, where repeated revivals occur. These findings establish cavity photon statistics and environmental memory time as key control parameters for engineering qubit entanglement dynamics in qubit-cavity systems, revealing how system-environment correlations govern quantum information preservation.
We develop a theory describing the transient transmission through noisy qubit-resonator systems with quadratic interactions as are found in superconducting and nanomechanical resonators coupled to solid-state qubits. After generalizing the quantum Langevin equations to arbitrary qubit-resonator couplings, we show that only the cases of linear and quadratic couplings allow for an analytical treatment within standard input-output theory. Focussing on quadratic couplings and allowing for arbitrary initial qubit coherences, it is shown that noise characteristics can be extracted from input-output measurements by recording both the averaged fluctuations in the transmission probability and the averaged phase. Our results represent an extension to the field of transmission-based noise spectroscopy with immediate practical applications.
I present a theory of environmental noise spectroscopy via dynamical decoupling of a qubit at an optimal working point. Considering a sequence of nnn pulses and pure dephasing due to quadratic coupling to Gaussian distributed noise $\ensuremath{\xi}(t)$, I use the linked-cluster (cumulant) expansion to calculate the coherence decay. Solutions allowing for reconstruction of spectral density of noise are given. For noise with correlation time shorter than the time scale on which coherence decays, the noise filtered by the dynamical decoupling procedure can be treated as effectively Gaussian at large nnn, and well-established methods of noise spectroscopy can be used to reconstruct the spectrum of ${\ensuremath{\xi}}^{2}(t)$ noise. On the other hand, for noise of dominant low-frequency character $(1/{f}^{\ensuremath{\beta}}$ noise with $\ensuremath{\beta}>1)$, an infinite-order resummation of the cumulant expansion is necessary, and it leads to an analytical formula for coherence decay having a power-law tail at long times. In this case, the coherence at time ttt depends both on spectral density of $\ensuremath{\xi}(t)$ noise at $\ensuremath{\omega}=n\ensuremath{\pi}/t$, and on the effective low-frequency cutoff of the noise spectrum, which is typically given by the inverse of the data acquisition time. Simulations of decoherence due to purely transverse noise show that the analytical formulas derived in this paper apply in this often encountered case of an optimal working point, provided that the number of pulses is not very large, and that the longitudinal qubit splitting is much larger than the transverse noise amplitude.
We analytically investigate the fidelity dynamics of a Jaynes--Cummings qubit coupled to a single-mode cavity in the presence of stochastic fluctuations of the qubit--cavity coupling. Such fluctuations naturally arise in cavity- and circuit-QED platforms due to fabrication imperfections, control-field noise, mechanical vibrations, and environmental disturbances. Since the qubit--cavity coupling governs the rate of coherent energy and information exchange, understanding the effects of its fluctuations is essential for assessing the performance of quantum communication, quantum sensing, and quantum information-processing protocols. We consider both Gaussian white noise and Ornstein--Uhlenbeck noise with finite correlation time as models for the coupling fluctuations. Exploiting the closed dynamics within each excitation manifold, we derive exact analytical expressions for the noise-averaged density matrix and the fidelity relative to the ideal noiseless evolution. We show that the fidelity is determined by a single decoherence factor governed by the integrated noise correlation function, establishing a direct connection between microscopic coupling fluctuations and macroscopic coherence loss. In the white-noise limit, the fidelity decays exponentially, whereas finite noise correlation times produce nonexponential decay and slower coherence loss. We further show that the crossover between Markovian-like and non-Markovian regimes is controlled by the ratio of the noise correlation rate to the coherent coupling strength, and that decoherence increases with photon number because of the enhanced effective qubit--cavity coupling. These results provide a unified analytical framework for quantifying decoherence induced by stochastic coupling fluctuations and for evaluating the robustness of cavity-QED protocols under correlated noise.