The most significant achievements of this project were: (1) Development and validation of the hardware and software needed to implement "strongly modulating pulses", by which high precision quantum gates can be obtain in realistic systems of up to 12 qubits; (2) A detailed analysis and evaluation of a 3-qubit quantum Fourier transform via full quantum process tomography; (3) An extensive set of mathematical and computational techniques to accomplish these goals, including Hadamard products, the real density matrix, and methods of fitting superoperators to experimental data; (4) Creation of a 3-qubit "noiseless subsystem", of a Bell state on two 2-qubit decoherence-free subspaces (DFS), and the invention of "partial" pseudopure states which will enable us to demonstrate robust methods for controlling multi-DFS-qubit systems by NMR; (5) Implementation of several quantum chaotic maps, and the discovery that these provide a scalable approach to determining the magnitude and kind of errors present in complex quantum computations; (6) The invention of a "spin amplifier", by which entanglement can be used to enable single spin measurement, and a small-scale demonstration by NMR; (7) Experiments demonstrating that the foregoing advances enable implementation of complex entangling unitary and decoherent operations, culminating in creation of a 12-qubit CAT state.
The most significant achievements of this project were: (1) Development and validation of the hardware and software needed to implement "strongly modulating pulses", by which high precision quantum gates can be obtain in realistic systems of up to 12 qubits; (2) A detailed analysis and evaluation of a 3-qubit quantum Fourier transform via full quantum process tomography; (3) An extensive set of mathematical and computational techniques to accomplish these goals, including Hadamard products, the real density matrix, and methods of fitting superoperators to experimental data; (4) Creation of a 3-qubit "noiseless subsystem", of a Bell state on two 2-qubit decoherence-free subspaces (DFS), and the invention of "partial" pseudopure states which will enable us to demonstrate robust methods for controlling multi-DFS-qubit systems by NMR; (5) Implementation of several quantum chaotic maps, and the discovery that these provide a scalable approach to determining the magnitude and kind of errors present in complex quantum computations; (6) The invention of a "spin amplifier", by which entanglement can be used to enable single spin measurement, and a small-scale demonstration by NMR; (7) Experiments demonstrating that the foregoing advances enable implementation of complex entangling unitary and decoherent operations, culminating in creation of a 12-qubit CAT state.
The subject of this thesis are experimental procedures for preparation, manipulation, and detection of specific quantum states of spin systems in the context of quantum computing. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron spin resonance (ESR) methods were used. The systems studied were small molecules in liquid state, small molecules embedded in a liquid crystal matrix, and paramagnetic centers in single crystals. The nuclear 19F spins of 2,3,4-Trifluoroaniline were used as qubits to implement the three-qubit Deutsch-Josza algorithm using high-resolution NMR. A classification of the Deutsch-Josza functions according to the operator representation of the corresponding oracle transformations was given. Different classes of functions may produce full, partial or no entanglement in the output states of the algorithm. This entanglement content is not immediately evident from the output states themselves. A procedure was given for mapping of the output states onto Bell- or GHZ-states by means of local transformations which preserve the entanglement content. A method for the visualization of single-spin unitary transformations was also presented. This visual representation can facilitate analysis and design of shaped rf pulses. For the purpose of quantum computing, it can be useful to suppress couplings between qubits during the application of finite-length single-qubit gates. The feasibility of this idea was demonstrated using small molecules in a liquid crystal matrix. In a series of proof-of-principle experiments, it was shown that the magic-echo sequence can be used to suppress the dipole-dipole coupling between spins and simultaneously selectively address a single spin by a soft rf pulse. The S-bus concept for spin-quantum computing holds some scalability promise and provides a testbed for studies of large, strongly coupled quantum registers. Single-crystal CaF2 weakly doped with Ce was used to implement the concept. The nine 19F nuclear spins adjacent to the paramagnetic Ce-ion serve as qubits while the electron spin plays the role of a quantum bus. The S-bus theory was tested experimentally. Procedures were given for the measurement of parameters characterizing the quantum state of the nuclear spins. An exact numeric treatment of this ten-spin system was done to aid in understanding the experimental findings. For a pair of nuclear spins with negligible direct dipolar coupling, the CNOT operation was implemented. The spin-spin coupling mediated by the bus spin was utilized for that purpose. The four Bell-states of these two distant spins were created. An experiment was performed who's signature allows those four entangled states to be distinguished. The paramagnetic cluster in CaF2:Ce is embedded in an extended network of 19F nuclear spins. This network is a powerful source of decoherence. A number of existing and a newly designed pulse sequence were tested with respect to their ability to suppress decoherence and their aptitude for use in quantum computing.
The results of quantum process tomography on a three-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor are presented and shown to be consistent with a detailed model of the system-plus-apparatus used for the experiments. The quantum operation studied was the quantum Fourier transform, which is important in several quantum algorithms and poses a rigorous test for the precision of our recently developed strongly modulating control fields. The results were analyzed in an attempt to decompose the implementation errors into coherent (overall systematic), incoherent (microscopically deterministic), and decoherent (microscopically random) components. This analysis yielded a superoperator consisting of a unitary part that was strongly correlated with the theoretically expected unitary superoperator of the quantum Fourier transform, an overall attenuation consistent with decoherence, and a residual portion that was not completely positive-although complete positivity is required for any quantum operation. By comparison with the results of computer simulations, the lack of complete positivity was shown to be largely a consequence of the incoherent errors which occurred over the full quantum process tomography procedure. These simulations further showed that coherent, incoherent, and decoherent errors can often be identified by their distinctive effects on the spectrum of the overall superoperator. The gate fidelity of the experimentally determined superoperator was 0.64, while the correlation coefficient between experimentally determined superoperator and the simulated superoperator was 0.79; most of the discrepancies with the simulations could be explained by the cumulative effect of small errors in the single qubit gates.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has proven to be a facile means of achieving small-scale demonstrations of quantum information processing. This was in large part made possible by the sophisticated methods of quantum control that have been developed by the NMR community over a span of more than 50 years. The traditional control methods, already perhaps the most complex examples of open-loop control available, were nevertheless designed primarily to assist in identifying the physical parameters of the underlying spin system, rather than to control the system with high precision. We have therefore extended the traditional methods in a variety of ways so as to achieve precise control, by taking advantage of prior knowledge of the physical parameters as determined by traditional methods. Due to the experimental challenges of real-time control, these developments relied upon our ability to simulate the evolution of the system under the action of radio-frequency control fields with essentially arbitrary precision, subject only to the available computing power. This talk presents an overview of our work in quantum control together with some of the on-going challenges still facing us
Abstract : This project aimed to address the most significant challenge facing the development of large-scale quantum computers: suppressing hardware error. Through this work we focused on the realization of a robust, high-fidelity Quantum Control Toolkit that is fully transportable between different quantum computing technology platforms. The techniques encapsulated herein were designed to provide qubit robustness to decoherence during memory (dynamical decoupling DD), and increase the fidelity of qubit operations undertaken in the presence of random environmental noise and control imperfections (dynamically corrected gates DCGs, and composite pulses CPs). This project has seen the demonstration of significant hardware-based improvements in quantum control fidelity along with the full experimental validation of an engineering-inspired filter-transfer function framework for quantum control.
Quantum computers can potentially solve real and relevant mathematical and physical problems that are intractable using classical machines. However, the experimental realization of quantum computers represents a significant challenge, because several opposing experimental requirements must be met. A set of coupled quantum bits must be manipulated and measured while coherently retaining entangled quantum states. Yet the manipulation and measurement processes almost inevitably lead to the decay of these fragile states.
This thesis work takes significant steps towards building a practical quantum computer using nuclear spins and liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. I present experimental results for proof of principle of quantum computing in a series of small implementations of quantum algorithms, culminating in the implementation of an adiabatic quantum optimization algorithm. The performance of adiabatic algorithms compared with classical optimization methods is unknown, but small quantum computers could provide crucial insight into answering this question. Furthermore, adiabatic algorithms also shed new light on the usefulness of quantum resources for computational tasks and hence they represent an important class of algorithms.
The second part of this thesis presents several methods developed for improving the control over NMR quantum computing experiments. Even though liquid state NMR quantum computers have well known and accepted scaling limitations, the developed tools are of general use. I will show how several tools are directly transferable to two other implementations of quantum computers; one using optical methods and the other using loops of superconducting material.
This work provides insight into what is needed to build a practical quantum computer, and delivers several tools and techniques that will be useful in future large-scale implementations of quantum computers.
Nuclear Magnetic Ressonance (NMR) is a widely used technique, with a long history of applications in chemestry, medicine, and material science. Twenty years ago, it emerged as a reliable source for quantum computing too, since the work of Cory. One of its major advantage is the ease with which arbitrary unitary transformations can be implemented, together with its experimental simplicity, that can be traced back to very simple NMR routines, which were being extensively used long before. However, some disadvantages came along, mostly related to experimental effort in the initialisation and measure processes, and scalability. In this work, we have successfully probed some simple quantum gates (Pauli-Z, Pauli-X and Hadamard) in one and two-qubit systems, realised in a NMR experiment. The work comprised a pseudo-pure state preparation, followed by the application of the gates, and a quantum tomography method, necessary to reconstruct the density matrix. The experiments were conducted with a chloroform sample, placed in a 300 MHz Bruker Avance II spectrometer, equipped with a superconducting magnet with a 7 T magnetic field.