Protected subspaces in quantum information

Patrick M. Hayden

Krzysztof Majgier, Hans Maassen, Karol Życzkowski

In certain situations the state of a quantum system, after transmission through a quantum channel, can be perfectly restored. This can be done by 'coding' the state space of the system before transmission into a 'protected' part of a larger state space, and by applying a proper 'decoding' map afterwards. We investigate two kinds of protected subspaces: the error correction subspaces and the dark subspaces. In neither case information leaks out of the system, but in the second it is more difficult to restore the state. Recent results on higher rank numerical ranges of operators are used to construct examples. In particular, dark spaces are constructed for any map of rank 2, for a biased permutations channel and for certain separable maps acting on multipartite systems. Furthermore, error correction subspaces are provided for a class of three unitary noise models.

Miroslav Svítek

Paola Cappellaro, J. S. Hodges, Timothy F. Havel +1 more

Decoherence-free subspaces protect quantum information from the effects of noise that is correlated across the physical qubits used to implement them. Given the ability to impose suitable Hamiltonians upon such a multi-qubit system, one can also implement a set of logical gates which enables universal computation on this information without compromising this protection. Real physical systems, however, seldom come with the correct Hamiltonians built-in, let alone the ability to turn them off and on at will. In the course of our development of quantum information processing devices based on liquid-state NMR, we have found the task of operating on quantum information encoded in decoherence-free subspaces rather more challenging than is commonly assumed. This contribution presents an overview of these challenges and the methods we have developed for overcoming them in practice. These methods promise to be broadly applicable to many of the physical systems proposed for the implementation of quantum information processing devices.

Qi‐Cheng Wu, Ye‐Hong Chen, Bi‐Hua Huang +3 more

Abstract In this paper, we propose a scheme to protect quantum state by utilizing the time‐dependent decoherence‐free subspaces (TDFSs) theory without the rotating‐wave approximation (RWA). A coherent control is designed to drive the quantum system into the TDFSs, moreover, the singularities of the designed coherent control can be avoided by appropriately choosing the control parameters. From an experimental view point, the influences of variations of the control parameters and the imperfect initial state are discussed in detail. Numerical simulations confirm that the scheme can protect the quantum information from both the environmental decoherence and the control errors. In addition, by comparing with the scheme employing RWA, we show that the weak coherent control field is not suitable to create the TDFS, the counter‐rotating terms in the strong coherent control are helpful to protect the quantum information.