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Journal of Applied Physics

Robust control of Josephson charge qubits

Markus Wenin, Robert Roloff, W. Pötz

Published Apr 15, 2009• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Typical for qubit realizations are two performance-limiting shortcomings: the physical system is not a perfect two-level system and it couples to an environment. In this work we investigate the limits of performance of the Josephson charge qubit due to the interplay of leakage into unwanted states and dissipative effects due to environmental noise within optimal control theory. For the example of the Hadamard transformation, we show that external control field-gate bias and magnetic flux, which perform the operation for the ideal qubit perfectly, show different robustness regarding leakage into unwanted states and against dissipation. Proper selection of the temporal evolution of gate bias and magnetic flux leads to performance improvements of typically 20% regarding dissipative effects with a predicted optimal fidelity of typically 98%, presuming perfect initial-state preparation and switching times of the order of 500 ps.

DOI
10.1063/1.3080242

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Typical for qubit realizations are two performance-limiting shortcomings: the physical system is not a perfect two-level system and it couples to an environment. In this work we investigate the limits of performance of the Josephson charge qubit due to the interplay of leakage into unwanted states and dissipative effects due to environmental noise within optimal control theory. For the example of the Hadamard transformation, we show that external control field-gate bias and magnetic flux, which perform the operation for the ideal qubit perfectly, show different robustness regarding leakage into unwanted states and against dissipation. Proper selection of the temporal evolution of gate bias and magnetic flux leads to performance improvements of typically 20% regarding dissipative effects with a predicted optimal fidelity of typically 98%, presuming perfect initial-state preparation and switching times of the order of 500 ps.
A process tomography based optimization scheme for open quantum systems is used to determine the performance limits of Josephson charge qubits within current experimental means. The qubit is modeled microscopically as an open quantum system taking into account state leakage, as well as environment-induced dephasing based on experimental noise spectra. Within time-optimal control theory, we show that the competing requirements for suppression of state leakage and dephasing can be met by an external control of the effective qubit-environment interaction, yielding minimal gate fidelity losses of around $\ensuremath{\Delta}F\ensuremath{\approx}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ under typical experimental conditions.
Quantum optimal control theory allows us to design accurate quantum gates. We employ it to design high-fidelity two-bit gates for Josephson charge qubits in the presence of both leakage and noise. Our protocol considerably increases the fidelity of the gate and, more important, it is quite robust in the disruptive presence of 1/f noise. The improvement in the gate performances discussed in this work (errors approximately 10(-3)-10(-4) in realistic cases) allows us to cross the fault tolerance threshold.
Superconducting nanoelectrical circuits are promising candidates for the physical implementation of the basic building block of a quantum computer, the qubit. We investigate how optimal control theory can be applied to optimize the dynamics of Josephson qubits. For the example of the charge qubit, several numerical methods are employed to search for external control fields which, by current technology, are realistic and induce the desired unitary time evolution within the system (i.e. the desired gate operation) as faithfully as possible in presence of dissipation, decoherence and leakage. Associated calculations which model the environment microscopically are time-intensive so that parallel computing methods are beneficial in the sampling over control fields. In particular, we discuss the performance of differential-evolution-algorithm based optimizations on a cluster. Using a simpler Lindblad model for environmental effects, we compare the performance of a conjugate-gradient approach to that of a genetic algorithm.
In two and three coupled Josephson charge qubits, we exemplify how to take pulses for realizing quantum gates from fidelity-limited pioneering stages to the decoherence limit of near time optimal high-fidelity controls. Thus, a CNOT gate can be obtained with a fidelity >1>1>1--${10}^{\ensuremath{-}9}$ for the two qubits. Even when including higher charge states, the leakage is below 11%1, although the pulses are nonadiabatic. The controls are five times faster than the pioneering experiment [Nature (London) 425, 941 (2003)] for otherwise identical parameters---i.e., a progress towards the error-correction threshold by a factor of 100. We outline schemes to generate these shaped pulses by Cauer synthesis, or more generally by few LCR circuits. The approach generalizes to larger systems: e.g., directly realizing a TOFFOLI gate in three linearly coupled charge qubits is shown to be 13 times faster than decomposing it into a circuit of nine CNOT gates of the above experimental work. In view of the next generation of fast pulse shapers, the combination of methods is designed to find wide application in quantum control of pseudospin and macroscopic quantum systems.
This work studies the feasibility of optimal control of high-fidelity quantum gates in a model of interacting two-level particles. One particle (the qubit) serves as the quantum information processor, whose evolution is controlled by a time-dependent external field. The other particles are not directly controlled and serve as an effective environment, coupling to which is the source of decoherence. The control objective is to generate target one-qubit gates in the presence of strong environmentally-induced decoherence and under physically motivated restrictions on the control field. It is found that interactions among the environmental particles have a negligible effect on the gate fidelity and require no additional adjustment of the control field. Another interesting result is that optimally controlled quantum gates are remarkably robust to random variations in qubit-environment and inter-environment coupling strengths. These findings demonstrate the utility of optimal control for management of quantum-information systems in a very precise and specific manner, especially when the dynamics complexity is exacerbated by inherently uncertain environmental coupling.
Constructing high-fidelity control fields that are robust to control, system, and/or surrounding environment uncertainties is a crucial objective for quantum information processing. Using the two-state Landau-Zener model for illustrative simulations of a controlled qubit, we generate optimal controls for $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$ and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses and investigate their inherent robustness to uncertainty in the magnitude of the drift Hamiltonian. Next, we construct a quantum-control protocol to improve system-drift robustness by combining environment-decoupling pulse criteria and optimal control theory for unitary operations. By perturbatively expanding the unitary time-evolution operator for an open quantum system, previous analysis of environment-decoupling control pulses has calculated explicit control-field criteria to suppress environment-induced errors up to (but not including) third order from $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$ and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses. We systematically integrate this criteria with optimal control theory, incorporating an estimate of the uncertain parameter to produce improvements in gate fidelity and robustness, demonstrated via a numerical example based on double quantum dot qubits. For the qubit model used in this work, postfacto analysis of the resulting controls suggests that realistic control-field fluctuations and noise may contribute just as significantly to gate errors as system and environment fluctuations.