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arXiv:2303.07374 · Physical Review A

Higher-order methods for Hamiltonian engineering pulse sequence design

Matthew Tyler, Hengyun Zhou, Leigh S. Martin, Nathaniel Leitao, Mikhail D. Lukin

Published Dec 1, 2023• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We introduce a framework for designing Hamiltonian engineering pulse sequences that systematically accounts for the effects of higher-order contributions to the Floquet-Magnus expansion. Our techniques result in simple, intuitive decoupling rules, despite the higher-order contributions naively involving complicated, nonlocal-in-time commutators. We illustrate how these rules can be used to efficiently design improved Hamiltonian engineering pulse sequences for a wide variety of tasks such as dynamical decoupling, quantum sensing, and quantum simulation.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.108.062602

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We introduce a framework for designing Hamiltonian engineering pulse sequences that systematically accounts for the effects of higher-order contributions to the Floquet-Magnus expansion. Our techniques result in simple, intuitive decoupling rules, despite the higher-order contributions naively involving complicated, nonlocal-in-time commutators. We illustrate how these rules can be used to efficiently design improved Hamiltonian engineering pulse sequences for a wide variety of tasks such as dynamical decoupling, quantum sensing, and quantum simulation.
Dynamical decoupling techniques constitute an integral part of many quantum sensing platforms, often leading to orders-of-magnitude improvements in coherence time and sensitivity. Most ac sensing sequences involve a periodic echolike structure, in which the target signal is synchronized with the echo period. We show that for strongly interacting systems, this construction leads to a fundamental sensitivity limit associated with imperfect interaction decoupling. We present a simple physical picture demonstrating the origin of this limitation, and further formalize these considerations in terms of concise higher-order decoupling rules. We then show how these limitations can be surpassed by identifying a novel sequence building block, in which the signal period matches twice the echo period. Using these decoupling rules and the resulting sequence building block, we experimentally demonstrate significant improvements in dynamical decoupling timescales and magnetic field sensitivity, opening the door for new applications in quantum sensing and quantum many-body physics.
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The Floquet-Magnus expansion is a widely used tool to derive effective descriptions of time-periodic quantum systems by approximating their dynamics with a time-independent Hamiltonian. However, its standard formulation is, strictly speaking, restricted to bounded Hamiltonians. In this work, we extend its definition and analysis to a broad class of time-periodic unbounded Hamiltonians. Our approach is based on an a priori distinct nonperturbative framework for the construction of effective Hamiltonians, which we show to reproduce the Floquet-Magnus expansion. A particular strength of our framework is that it allows us to prove that the resulting effective dynamics approximates the original time evolution propagators to arbitrary order in the high-frequency limit without requiring convergence of the Floquet-Magnus expansion, a condition that is already highly restrictive even in the bounded setting. We illustrate the scope of the method on representative models: the quantum Rabi Hamiltonian in the interaction picture, and the periodically driven quantum harmonic oscillator.
Engineering effective Hamiltonians is essential for advancing quantum technologies, including quantum simulation, sensing, and computing. This paper presents a general framework for effective Hamiltonian engineering, enabling robust, precise, and efficient quantum control strategies. To achieve efficiency, we focus on creating target zeroth-order effective Hamiltonians while minimizing higher-order contributions and enhancing robustness against systematic errors. The control design identifies the minimal subspace of the toggling-frame Hamiltonian and the full set of achievable, zeroth-order, effective Hamiltonians. The framework also enables robust state transfer and characterization of achievable density matrices, and extends to stochastic fluctuations via a cumulant expansion. Examples are included to illustrate the process flow and resultant precision and robustness.
Advancing quantum technologies requires precise and robust coherent control of quantum systems. Robust higher-order Hamiltonian engineering is essential for high-precision control and for accessing effective dynamics absent at zeroth order. Here, we introduce a systematic methodology for achieving the precision, robustness, and complexity required for quantum control through the engineering of higher-order processes and effective Hamiltonians. We identify the minimal subspace of achievable effective Hamiltonian at each order and provide universal cost functions for achieving desired targets. Examples include robust sequences for decoupling, three-body interactions and detuning/interaction correlations.
Floquet engineering in quantum simulation employs externally applied high-frequency pulses to dynamically design steady-state effective Hamiltonians. Such protocols can be used to enlarge the space of Hamiltonians but approximations often limit pulse profile shapes and therefore the space of available effective Hamiltonians. We consider a nonstroboscopic high-frequency expansion formalism for Floquet engineering. We generalize the pulse profiles available by rigorously keeping all necessary terms to lowest order in inverse frequency expansions used to derive the effective Hamiltonians. Our approach allows wide tunability in application of external driving fields. We apply our method to long-range interacting XXZ spin Hamiltonians. We model an example application where we derive conditions on specific pulse shapes to engineer effective Ising models from XXZ models. Our method allows the space of continuous pulse profiles, relevant to experimental control fields, to better and more accurately explore possible effective Hamiltonians available for Floquet engineering.