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Quantum Entanglement Generation in Trapped Ions Using Coherent and Dissipative Methods

Yiheng Lin

Published Jan 1, 2015• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Entangled states are a key resource in fundamental quantum physics, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation. In this thesis, we focus on the demonstrations of two novel methods to generate entanglement. First, we implement dissipative production of a maximally entangled steady state on two trapped ions. Dissipative and coherent processes are combined and implemented in a continuous time-independent fashion, analogous to optical pumping of atomic states, continuously driving the system towards the steady entangled state. With this method, we obtain a Bell state fidelity up to 0.89(2). Second, we propose and demonstrate a novel coherent process to confine quantum evolution in a subspace between an initial separable state and the target entangled state. We demonstrate this scheme on two and three ions obtaining a Bell state fidelity up to 0.992(2). Both of these methods are robust against certain types of experimental noise and decoherence. Additionally, we demonstrate sympathetic cooling of ion chains to near the ground\nstate of motion with an electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) method. This results in roughly an order of magnitude faster cooling time while using significantly lower laser power compared to the conventional resolved sideband cooling method. These techniques may be helpful for scaled-up quantum computing.

Related papers

Fast gates and steady states: entangling trapped ions

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This thesis describes schemes for both a fast two-qubit gate operation and the steady-state preparation of a Bell state with trapped ions. A critical figure of merit for quantum computing with trapped ions is the gate duration relative to the decoherence timescale. We propose a fast gate scheme that off ers improvements in time, fidelity and simplicity of implementation over existing fast gate proposals. Our scheme can operate on both neighbouring and non-neighbouring ions in a long ion crystal. This provides a simpler and faster mechanism than traditional gates for complex quantum computing operations on large numbers of ions. The scheme achieves fidelities well above quantum error correction thresholds around 0.0001, and operates arbitrarily fast given arbitrary laser repetition rates. The production of these ultra-fast pulses is an experimental challenge, and fast gates have not yet been implemented; we present an implementation scheme using pulse splitting to provide a higher repetition rate and the pulse timing freedoms required for the gate scheme. We also analyse the effects of errors in the pulses on the gate operation. We analyse another strategy to generate entanglement using a driven dissipative process. Typically, environmental couplings cause decoherence. However, by combining dissipative dynamics with suitably chosen Hamiltonian evolution, the system can be steered to the desired steady states. Our steady-state scheme prepares a maximally-entangled Bell state with fidelity above 0.99, much higher than for schemes implemented with trapped ions. The driven dissipation continuously pumps the system towards the antisymmetric Bell steady-state, which is dark to the system dynamics and robust to parameter variations. The dominant loss mechanism is anomalous heating of the motional modes, reducing our fidelity by less than 0.01 for current experimental rates. Our scheme jointly addresses the ions and does not use sympathetic cooling. We enhance our scheme by combining the dissipative state preparation with the detection of photons, and obtain a significant fidelity enhancement.

•Jan 1, 2015•0 citations

Detection-Enhanced Steady State Entanglement with Ions

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Driven dissipative steady state entanglement schemes take advantage of coupling to the environment to robustly prepare highly entangled states. We present a scheme for two trapped ions to generate a maximally entangled steady state with fidelity above 0.99, appropriate for use in quantum protocols. Furthermore, we extend the scheme by introducing detection of our dissipation process, significantly enhancing the fidelity. Our scheme is robust to anomalous heating and requires no sympathetic cooling.

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Abstract We present a scheme for the dissipative preparation of an entangled steady state between two atomic qubits separately trapped in the coupled cavities. The combination of coherent driving fields and dissipative processes will drive the system into a steady state. By choosing different frequency of classical laser field, the target steady state can be generated in different ways. In our scheme, the atomic spontaneous emission and the cavity decay can be used as a prerequisite. The numerical simulation shows that the maximally entangled state with high fidelity and purity can be produced regardless of the initial state. The fidelity is insensitive to the fluctuation of the system parameters.

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A Modular Quantum System of Trapped Atomic Ions

David Hucul

Scaling up controlled quantum systems to involve large numbers of qubits remains one of the outstanding challenges of quantum information science. One path toward scalability is the use of a modular architecture where adjacent qubits may be entangled with applied electromagnetic fields, and remote qubits may be entangled using photon interference. Trapped atomic ion qubits are one of the most promising platforms for scaling up quantum systems by combining long coherence times with high fidelity entangling operations between proximate and remote qubits. In this thesis, I present experimental progress on combining entanglement between remote atomic ions separated by 1 meter with near-eld entanglement between atomic ions in the same ion trap. I describe the experimental improvements to increase the remote entanglement rate by orders of magnitude to nearly 5 per second. This is the first experimental demonstration where the remote entanglement rate exceeds the decoherence rate of the entangled qubits. The flexibility of creating remote entanglement through photon interference is demonstrated by using the interference of distinguishable photons without sacrificing remote entanglement rate or fidelity. Next I describe the use of master clock in combination with a frequency comb to lock the phases of all laser-induced interactions between remote ion traps while removing optical phase stability requirements. The combination of both types of entanglement gates to create a small quantum network are described. Finally, I present ways to mitigate cross talk between photonic and memory qubits by using different trapped ion species. I show preliminary work on performing state detection of nuclear spin 0 ions by using entanglement between atomic ion spin and photon polarization. These control techniques may be important for building a large-scale modular quantum system.

•Jan 1, 2015•1 citation
Entangled states are a key resource in fundamental quantum physics, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation. In this thesis, we focus on the demonstrations of two novel methods to generate entanglement. First, we implement dissipative production of a maximally entangled steady state on two trapped ions. Dissipative and coherent processes are combined and implemented in a continuous time-independent fashion, analogous to optical pumping of atomic states, continuously driving the system towards the steady entangled state. With this method, we obtain a Bell state fidelity up to 0.89(2). Second, we propose and demonstrate a novel coherent process to confine quantum evolution in a subspace between an initial separable state and the target entangled state. We demonstrate this scheme on two and three ions obtaining a Bell state fidelity up to 0.992(2). Both of these methods are robust against certain types of experimental noise and decoherence. Additionally, we demonstrate sympathetic cooling of ion chains to near the ground\nstate of motion with an electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) method. This results in roughly an order of magnitude faster cooling time while using significantly lower laser power compared to the conventional resolved sideband cooling method. These techniques may be helpful for scaled-up quantum computing.
This thesis describes schemes for both a fast two-qubit gate operation and the steady-state preparation of a Bell state with trapped ions. A critical figure of merit for quantum computing with trapped ions is the gate duration relative to the decoherence timescale. We propose a fast gate scheme that off ers improvements in time, fidelity and simplicity of implementation over existing fast gate proposals. Our scheme can operate on both neighbouring and non-neighbouring ions in a long ion crystal. This provides a simpler and faster mechanism than traditional gates for complex quantum computing operations on large numbers of ions. The scheme achieves fidelities well above quantum error correction thresholds around 0.0001, and operates arbitrarily fast given arbitrary laser repetition rates. The production of these ultra-fast pulses is an experimental challenge, and fast gates have not yet been implemented; we present an implementation scheme using pulse splitting to provide a higher repetition rate and the pulse timing freedoms required for the gate scheme. We also analyse the effects of errors in the pulses on the gate operation. We analyse another strategy to generate entanglement using a driven dissipative process. Typically, environmental couplings cause decoherence. However, by combining dissipative dynamics with suitably chosen Hamiltonian evolution, the system can be steered to the desired steady states. Our steady-state scheme prepares a maximally-entangled Bell state with fidelity above 0.99, much higher than for schemes implemented with trapped ions. The driven dissipation continuously pumps the system towards the antisymmetric Bell steady-state, which is dark to the system dynamics and robust to parameter variations. The dominant loss mechanism is anomalous heating of the motional modes, reducing our fidelity by less than 0.01 for current experimental rates. Our scheme jointly addresses the ions and does not use sympathetic cooling. We enhance our scheme by combining the dissipative state preparation with the detection of photons, and obtain a significant fidelity enhancement.
Driven dissipative steady state entanglement schemes take advantage of coupling to the environment to robustly prepare highly entangled states. We present a scheme for two trapped ions to generate a maximally entangled steady state with fidelity above 0.99, appropriate for use in quantum protocols. Furthermore, we extend the scheme by introducing detection of our dissipation process, significantly enhancing the fidelity. Our scheme is robust to anomalous heating and requires no sympathetic cooling.
Entanglement generation can be robust against certain types of noise in approaches that deliberately incorporate dissipation into the system dynamics. The presence of additional dissipation channels may, however, limit fidelity and speed of the process. Here we show how quantum optimal control techniques can be used to both speed up the entanglement generation and increase the fidelity in a realistic setup, whilst respecting typical experimental limitations. For the example of entangling two trapped ion qubits (Lin et al 2013 Nature 504 415), we find an improved fidelity by simply optimizing the polarization of the laser beams utilized in the experiment. More significantly, an alternate combination of transitions between internal states of the ions, when combined with optimized polarization, enables faster entanglement and decreases the error by an order of magnitude.
We propose and implement a novel scheme for dissipatively pumping two qubits into a singlet Bell state. The method relies on a process of collective optical pumping to an excited level, to which all states apart from the singlet are coupled. We apply the method to deterministically entangle two trapped ^{40}Ca^{+} ions. Within 16 pumping cycles, an initially separable state is transformed into one with 83(1)% singlet fidelity, and states with initial fidelity of ⪆70% converge onto a fidelity of 93(1)%. We theoretically analyze the performance and error susceptibility of the scheme and find it to be insensitive to a large class of experimentally relevant noise sources.
Abstract We present a scheme for the dissipative preparation of an entangled steady state between two atomic qubits separately trapped in the coupled cavities. The combination of coherent driving fields and dissipative processes will drive the system into a steady state. By choosing different frequency of classical laser field, the target steady state can be generated in different ways. In our scheme, the atomic spontaneous emission and the cavity decay can be used as a prerequisite. The numerical simulation shows that the maximally entangled state with high fidelity and purity can be produced regardless of the initial state. The fidelity is insensitive to the fluctuation of the system parameters.
Scaling up controlled quantum systems to involve large numbers of qubits remains one of the outstanding challenges of quantum information science. One path toward scalability is the use of a modular architecture where adjacent qubits may be entangled with applied electromagnetic fields, and remote qubits may be entangled using photon interference. Trapped atomic ion qubits are one of the most promising platforms for scaling up quantum systems by combining long coherence times with high fidelity entangling operations between proximate and remote qubits. In this thesis, I present experimental progress on combining entanglement between remote atomic ions separated by 1 meter with near-eld entanglement between atomic ions in the same ion trap. I describe the experimental improvements to increase the remote entanglement rate by orders of magnitude to nearly 5 per second. This is the first experimental demonstration where the remote entanglement rate exceeds the decoherence rate of the entangled qubits. The flexibility of creating remote entanglement through photon interference is demonstrated by using the interference of distinguishable photons without sacrificing remote entanglement rate or fidelity. Next I describe the use of master clock in combination with a frequency comb to lock the phases of all laser-induced interactions between remote ion traps while removing optical phase stability requirements. The combination of both types of entanglement gates to create a small quantum network are described. Finally, I present ways to mitigate cross talk between photonic and memory qubits by using different trapped ion species. I show preliminary work on performing state detection of nuclear spin 0 ions by using entanglement between atomic ion spin and photon polarization. These control techniques may be important for building a large-scale modular quantum system.