Conditional multiqubit gates are a key component for elaborate quantum algorithms. In a recent work, Rasmussen et al. [Phys. Rev. A 101, 022308 (2020)] proposed an efficient single-step method for a prototypical multiqubit gate, a Toffoli gate, based on a combination of Ising interactions between control qubits and an appropriate driving field on a target qubit. Trapped ions are a natural platform to implement this method, since Ising interactions mediated by phonons have been demonstrated in increasingly large ion crystals. However, the simultaneous application of these interactions and the driving field required for the gate results in undesired entanglement between the qubits and the motion of the ions, reducing the gate fidelity. In this work, we propose a solution based on adiabatic switching of these phonon-mediated Ising interactions. We study the effects of imperfect ground-state cooling and use spin-echo techniques to undo unwanted phase accumulation in the achievable fidelities. For gates coupling to all axial modes of a linear crystal, we calculate high-fidelity
(>99 N-qubit rotations with
N=3−−7 ions cooled to their ground state of motion and a gate time below 1 ms. Finally, we study the effect of laser intensity fluctuations and find that the proposed gate requires intensity stabilization with subpercentage noise levels. The high fidelities obtained also for large crystals could make the gate competitive with gate-decomposed, multistep variants of the
N-qubit Toffoli gate, at the expense of requiring ground-state cooling of the ion crystal.
Gates acting on more than two qubits are appealing as they can substitute complex sequences of two-qubit gates, thus promising faster execution and higher fidelity. One important multiqubit operation is the quantum Toffoli gate that performs a controlled NOT operation on a target qubit depending on the state of two control qubits. Here we present the first experimental realization of the quantum Toffoli gate in an ion trap quantum computer, achieving a mean gate fidelity of 71(3)%. Our implementation is particularly efficient as the relevant logic information is directly encoded in the motion of the ion string.
Many efforts are currently underway to build a device capable of large scale quantum information processing (QIP). Whereas QIP has been demonstrated for a few qubits in several systems, many technical difficulties must be overcome in order to construct a large-scale device. In one proposal for large-scale QIP, trapped ions are manipulated by precisely controlled light pulses and moved through and stored in multizone trap arrays. The technical overhead necessary to precisely control both the ion geometrical configurations and the laser interactions is demanding. Here we propose methods that significantly reduce the overhead on laser-beam control for performing single- and multiple-qubit operations on trapped ions. We show how a universal set of operations can be implemented by controlled transport of ions through stationary laser beams. At the same time, each laser beam can be used to perform many operations in parallel, potentially reducing the total laser power necessary to carry out QIP tasks. The overall setup necessary for implementing transport gates is simpler than for gates executed on stationary ions. We also suggest a transport-based two-qubit gate scheme utilizing microfabricated permanent magnets that can be executed without laser light.
We discuss a simple architecture for a quantum toffoli gate implemented using three trapped ions. The gate, which, in principle, can be implemented with a single laser-induced operation, is effective under rather general conditions and is strikingly robust (within any experimentally realistic range of values) against dephasing, heating, and random fluctuations of the Hamiltonian parameters. We provide a full characterization of the unitary and noise-affected gate using three-qubit quantum process tomography.
The family of
n-bit Toffoli gates, with the two-bit Toffoli gate as the figurehead, are of great interest in quantum information as they can be used as universal gates and in quantum error correction, among other things. We present a single-step implementation of arbitrary
n-bit Toffoli gates (up to a local change of basis), based on resonantly driving a single qubit that has a strong Ising coupling to
n other qubits. The setup in the two-qubit case turns out to be identical to the universal Barenco gate. The gate time and error are, in theory, independent of the number of control qubits, scaling better than conventional circuit decompositions. We note that our assumptions, namely, strongly coupling
n+1 qubits and a driving frequency that scales with
n, may break down for large systems. Still, our protocol could enhance the capabilities of intermediate-scale quantum computers, and we discuss the prospects of implementing our protocol on trapped ions, Rydberg atoms, and superconducting circuits. Simulations of the latter platform show that the Toffoli gate with two control bits attains fidelities of above 0.98 even in the presence of decoherence. We also show how similar ideas can be used to make a series of controlled-not gates in a single step. We show how these can speed up the implementation of quantum error correcting codes and we simulate the encoding steps of the three-qubit bit-flip code and the seven-qubit Steane code.