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Physica Scripta

Effects of low-frequency noise in driven coherent nanodevices

G. Falci, Marco Berritta, A Russo, Antonio D’Arrigo, Elisabetta Paladino

Published Nov 1, 2012• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the effect of low-frequency noise in ac-driven two- or many-level coherent nanodevices. Fluctuations in the properties of the device are translated into equivalent fluctuations of the driving fields. The impact on Rabi oscillations can be modulated with the detuning and minimized at resonance. In three-level atoms slow noise produces qualitative changes for protocols as coherent population transfer. We propose a strategy allowing us to operate at parity symmetry points, where the device is well protected against noise, despite selection rules preventing direct couplings to external fields of involved transitions.

DOI
10.1088/0031-8949/2012/t151/014020

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We study the effect of low-frequency noise in ac-driven two- or many-level coherent nanodevices. Fluctuations in the properties of the device are translated into equivalent fluctuations of the driving fields. The impact on Rabi oscillations can be modulated with the detuning and minimized at resonance. In three-level atoms slow noise produces qualitative changes for protocols as coherent population transfer. We propose a strategy allowing us to operate at parity symmetry points, where the device is well protected against noise, despite selection rules preventing direct couplings to external fields of involved transitions.
Recent experiments have demonstrated coherent phenomena in three-level systems based on superconducting nanocircuits. This opens the possibility to detect Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) in artificial atoms. Low-fequency noise (often 1/f) is one of the main sources of decoherence in these systems, and we study its effect on the transfer efficiency. We propose a way to analyze low frequency fluctuations in terms of fictitious correlated fluctuations of external parameters. We discuss a specific implementation, namely the Quantronium setup of a Cooper-pair box, showing that optimizing the trade-off between efficient coupling and protection against noise may allow us to observe coherent population transfer in this nanodevice.
Understanding the nature of two-level tunneling defects is important for minimizing their disruptive effects in various nanodevices. By exploiting the resonant coupling of these defects to a superconducting qubit, one can probe and coherently manipulate them individually. In this work, we utilize a phase qubit to induce Rabi oscillations of single tunneling defects and measure their dephasing rates as a function of the defect's asymmetry energy, which is tuned by an applied strain. The dephasing rates scale quadratically with the external strain and are inversely proportional to the Rabi frequency. These results are analyzed and explained within a model of interacting defects, in which pure dephasing of coherent high-frequency (gigahertz) defects is caused by interaction with incoherent low-frequency thermally excited defects. Our analysis sets an upper bound for the relaxation rates of thermally excited defects interacting strongly with strain fields.
The efficiency of the future devices for quantum information processing is limited mostly by the finite decoherence rates of the individual qubits and quantum gates. Recently, substantial progress was achieved in enhancing the time within which a solid-state qubit demonstrates coherent dynamics. This progress is based mostly on a successful isolation of the qubits from external decoherence sources obtained by engineering. Under these conditions, the material-inherent sources of noise start to play a crucial role. In most cases, quantum devices are affected by noise decreasing with frequency fff approximately as 1/f1/f1/f. According to the present point of view, such noise is due to material- and device-specific microscopic degrees of freedom interacting with quantum variables of the nanodevice. The simplest picture is that the environment that destroys the phase coherence of the device can be thought of as a system of two-state fluctuators, which experience random hops between their states. If the hopping times are distributed in an exponentially broad domain, the resulting fluctuations have a spectrum close to 1/f1/f1/f in a large frequency range. This paper reviews the current state of the theory of decoherence due to degrees of freedom producing 1/f1/f1/f noise. Basic mechanisms of such noises in various nanodevices are discussed and several models describing the interaction of the noise sources with quantum devices are reviewed. The main focus of the review is to analyze how the 1/f1/f1/f noise destroys their coherent operation. The start is from individual qubits concentrating mostly on the devices based on superconductor circuits and then some special issues related to more complicated architectures are discussed. Finally, several strategies for minimizing the noise-induced decoherence are considered.
We consider two representative problems that deal with the fluctuator-induced decoherence from two very different perspectives-microscopic and macroscopic. In the first part, we consider an individual two-level system inside a Josephson junction shunted by a resistor. If the TLS modulates the Josephson energy and/or is optically active, it can be Rabi driven by the Josephson oscillation. The Rabi oscillations, in turn, translate into oscillations of current and voltage which can be detected in noise measurements. This effect provides an option to fully characterize the TLS inside Josephson junction and to find the TLS's contribution to the decoherence when the junction is used as a qubit. In the second part, we study the contribution of an ensemble of non-stationary glassy charge fluctuators on qubit decoherence. Low-temperature dynamics of insulating glasses is dominated by a macroscopic concentration of tunneling two-level systems. Due to exponentially broad distribution of their tunneling rates and the finite experimental manipulation timescales, some of the fluctuators are temporarily stuck in high-energy non-thermal states. We find that at low enough temperatures, non-stationary contribution due to these slow non-thermal fluctuators can dominate the stationary (thermal) one, and discuss how this effect can be minimized.
The implementation of a Lambda scheme in superconducting artificial atoms could allow detection of stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) and other quantum manipulations in the microwave regime. However, symmetries which on one hand protect the system against decoherence yield selection rules which may cancel coupling to the pump external drive. The tradeoff between efficient coupling and decoherence due to broad-band colored noise (BBCN), which is often the main source of decoherence, is addressed in the class of nanodevices based on the Cooper pair box (CPB) design. We study transfer efficiency by STIRAP, showing that substantial efficiency is achieved for off-symmetric bias only in the charge-phase regime. We find a number of results uniquely due to non-Markovianity of BBCN, namely (a) the efficiency for STIRAP depends essentially on noise channels in the trapped subspace; (b) low-frequency fluctuations can be analyzed and represented as fictitious correlated fluctuations of the detunings of the external drives; and (c) a simple figure of merit for design and operating prescriptions allowing the observation of STIRAP is proposed. The emerging physical picture also applies to other classes of coherent nanodevices subject to BBCN.
Recent experiments on a range of engineered quantum systems have highlighted the important role of interacting two-level systems (TLSs) in modifying device properties and generating fluctuations. Focusing on the case of an oscillator coupled to a single near-resonant TLS, we explore how interactions between the TLS and lower-frequency thermally activated two-level fluctuators (TLFs) degrade the oscillator's coherence. Depending on the strength of the couplings, a single TLF can give rise to coherence oscillations that appear alongside, or supplant, Rabi oscillations of the oscillator-TLS system. Bath-driven transitions in the TLF cause irreversible coherence decay at a rate that is highly sensitive to both the couplings and the transition rate. For an ensemble of TLFs, we identify and characterise the different regimes of non-exponential phase-averaging-driven coherence decay that the oscillator can display. Using numerical calculations, we examine the extent to which systems with just a few TLFs differ from the limit of a large (continuum) TLF ensemble. Our work provides a theoretical framework for understanding the interplay of coherent TLS interactions and TLF-induced dephasing in quantum devices such as superconducting and phononic resonators.