International Journal of Modern Physics B

CONTROL AND ERROR PREVENTION IN CONDENSED MATTER QUANTUM COMPUTING DEVICES

Mark Byrd, Lian-Ao Wu

Published May 30, 2007• 0 citations

Abstract

Proposals for scalable quantum computing devices suffer not only from decoherence due to their interaction with the environment, but also from severe engineering constraints. For example, our ability to implement quantum gates is determined, in part, by the experimentally available interactions with which quantum information may be processed. Here we review a practical solution to some of the major concerns, control and error prevention, addressing solid state proposals for quantum computing devices. Some noise is eliminated by encoding a logical qubit into two qubits, other noise is reduced by an efficient set of decoupling pulse sequences. The same encoding removes the need for single-qubit operations which pose a difficult design constraint. We also discuss several generalizations which follow from this work.

DOI: 10.1142/s0217979207043841

Related papers

Comprehensive Encoding and Decoupling Solution to Problems of Decoherence and Design in Solid-State Quantum Computing

Mark Byrd, Daniel A. Lidar

Proposals for scalable quantum computing devices suffer not only from decoherence due to the interaction with their environment, but also from severe engineering constraints. Here we introduce a practical solution to these major concerns, addressing solid-state proposals in particular. Decoherence is first reduced by encoding a logical qubit into two qubits, then completely eliminated by an efficient set of decoupling pulse sequences. The same encoding removes the need for single-qubit operations, which pose a difficult design constraint. We further show how the dominant decoherence processes can be identified empirically, in order to optimize the decoupling pulses.

arXiv:quant-ph/0112054Physical Review LettersJul 3, 200298 citations

Combined error correction techniques for quantum computing architectures

Mark Byrd, Daniel A. Lidar

Proposals for quantum computing devices are many and varied. They each have unique noise processes that make none of them fully reliable at this time. There are several error correction/avoidance techniques which are valuable for reducing or eliminating errors, but not one, alone, will serve as a panacea. One must therefore take advantage of the strength of each of these techniques so that we may extend the coherence times of the quantum systems and create more reliable computing devices. To this end we give a general strategy for using dynamical decoupling operations on encoded subspaces. These encodings may be of any form; of particular importance are decoherence-free subspaces and quantum error correction codes. We then give means for empirically determining an appropriate set of dynamical decoupling operations for a given experiment. Using these techniques, we then propose a comprehensive encoding solution to many of the problems of quantum computing proposals which use exchange-type interactions. This uses a decoherence-free subspace and an efficient set of dynamical decoupling operations. It also addresses the problem of controllability in solid-state quantum dot devices.

arXiv:quant-ph/0210072Journal of Modern OpticsJan 1, 200320 citations

Efficient Universal Leakage Elimination for Physical and Encoded Qubits

Lian-Ao Wu, Mark Byrd, Daniel A. Lidar

Decoherence-induced leakage errors can couple a physical or encoded qubit to other levels, thus potentially damaging the qubit. They can therefore be very detrimental in quantum information processing and require special attention. Here we present a general method for removing such errors by using simple decoupling and recoupling pulse sequences. The proposed gates are experimentally accessible in a variety of promising quantum-computing proposals.

arXiv:quant-ph/0202168Physical Review LettersAug 27, 2002102 citations

Control of qubits encoded in decoherence-free subspaces

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.

Laser PhysicsApr 1, 20075 citations

Overview of quantum error prevention and leakage elimination

Mark Byrd, Lian-Ao Wu, Daniel A. Lidar

Quantum error prevention strategies will be required to produce a scalable quantum computing device and are of central importance in this regard. Progress in this area has been quite rapid in the past few years. In order to provide an overview of the achievements in this area, we discuss the three major classes of error prevention strategies, the abilities of these methods and the shortcomings. We then discuss the combinations of these strategies which have recently been proposed in the literature. Finally, we present recent results in reducing errors on encoded subspaces using decoupling controls. We show how to generally remove mixing of an encoded subspace with external states (termed leakage errors) using decoupling controls. Such controls are known as ‘leakage elimination operations’ or ‘LEOs’.

arXiv:quant-ph/0402098Journal of Modern OpticsNov 1, 200444 citations

Toward Scalable Quantum Computing with Superconducting Circuits

Michael Kerschbaum

Quantum computing holds the promise of solving problems that are intractable for classical computers, with applications ranging from optimization and materials simulation to cryptography. It achieves this by leveraging the exponentially scaling dimensionality of the space encoding quantum information and by executing algorithms on quantum registers in superposition states – a feature often referred to as quantum parallelism. However, while encoding information in computational units capable of exploring a continuous set of quantum states enables exponential scaling of computational power with system size, quantum systems are also more susceptible to errors than their classical counterparts. These errors take the form of both control errors, where miscalibration of the control pulses causes coherent errors on the qubit states, as well as incoherent errors due to energy relaxation and dephasing. Scaling quantum systems to run useful algorithms involving hundreds or thousands of logical qubits will require quantum error correction. In this approach, quantum information is redundantly encoded across an entangled state of many physical qubits. This has enabled experimental demonstrations across various platforms – including ion traps, superconducting circuits, and neutral atoms – showing that encoded quantum states can be preserved beyond the coherence times of the constituting physical qubits. However, quantum state preservation is only one component needed for scalable quantum computing. To execute algorithms, it is also necessary to implement quantum gates on and between encoded qubits, in a way that maintains fault tolerance by preserving the ability to correct errors as they occur during the computation. In the first part of this thesis, we demonstrate the implementation of an error-corrected quantum operation that entangles two logical qubits. This is achieved by performing lattice surgery on a distance-three surface code qubit, resulting in a logical Bell state encoded in distance-three repetition codes, which enable the correction of single bit-flip errors. We further introduce techniques to benchmark and characterize the performance of logical operations, including applying the protocol to arbitrary logical input states and performing logical quantum process tomography. Together, these results constitute one of the first realizations of error-corrected lattice surgery in superconducting circuits. While quantum error correction can correct errors provided they occur with sufficiently low frequency, it may fail when many qubits experience errors simultaneously. In the second part of this thesis, we therefore shift focus to a specific error mechanism known to cause correlated errors in superconducting circuits – quasiparticle-induced decoherence. In this case, various forms of energy deposition on the quantum device can break Cooper pairs into quasiparticles, which may subsequently diffuse to the tunnel junction and interact with the qubit state, thereby causing decoherence. In this thesis, we investigate the impact of quasiparticle tunneling on qubit performance, with a focus on infrared-induced quasiparticles. We compare the sensitivity of niobium-based qubits to those made from tantalum – a material that has gained interest in recent years following demonstrations of qubits with improved coherence times based on this material. Using a thermal radiator source, we show that the performance of tantalum qubits may be limited by infrared-induced quasiparticles in typical superconducting circuit experimental setups. By employing both ambient and in-line infrared filters, we investigate the effectiveness of different filtering strategies and develop best practices for engineering cryogenic environments for superconducting quantum processors. The results presented in this thesis contribute to the advancement of quantum computing based on superconducting circuits by implementing and characterizing quantum error-corrected operations, and by investigating quasiparticles as a source of decoherence, along with strategies to improve infrared filtering and signal conditioning in cryogenic environments for future fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Jan 1, 20260 citations