Abstract Single qubit pure state is a fundamental resource in quantum information and quantum computation. Therefore, it is of great importance to protect the coherence of single qubits against decoherence. In this letter, we demonstrate that decoherence caused by spontaneous emission can be effectively suppressed by adding a universal static external field. In order to have an intuitive view to the protection effects and its physical mechanisms, we study the coherence evolution of a single qubit on a Bloch sphere. We can clearly see that different external resonant drivings can rotate the Bloch vector around different axes, and the steady-state solution of the master equation (under protection) are visualized on the Bloch sphere. Furthermore, the frequency detuning between the qubit system and the driving is taken into account, and the results show that our protection scheme still works fine in the detuned cases and the smaller the detuning is, the better the protection effect is. In addition, this protocol can protect the coherence of single qubit states with a wide range of driving parameters, and help people to design simple coherence protection schemes for qubit states. The simplicity and the abundance of the current scheme may warrant its experimental realization.
Abstract Single qubit pure state is a fundamental resource in quantum information and quantum computation. Therefore, it is of great importance to protect the coherence of single qubits against decoherence. In this letter, we demonstrate that decoherence caused by spontaneous emission can be effectively suppressed by adding a universal static external field. In order to have an intuitive view to the protection effects and its physical mechanisms, we study the coherence evolution of a single qubit on a Bloch sphere. We can clearly see that different external resonant drivings can rotate the Bloch vector around different axes, and the steady-state solution of the master equation (under protection) are visualized on the Bloch sphere. Furthermore, the frequency detuning between the qubit system and the driving is taken into account, and the results show that our protection scheme still works fine in the detuned cases and the smaller the detuning is, the better the protection effect is. In addition, this protocol can protect the coherence of single qubit states with a wide range of driving parameters, and help people to design simple coherence protection schemes for qubit states. The simplicity and the abundance of the current scheme may warrant its experimental realization.
A field configuration utilizing local static fields and a few continuous-wave driving fields is constructed to achieve universal (but low-order) protection of two-qubit states. That is, two-qubit states can be protected against arbitrary system-environment coupling with control fields if their frequencies are sufficiently large as compared with the cutoff frequency of the environment. Equally important, we show that it is possible to construct driving fields to protect two-qubit entangling gates against decoherence, without assuming any particular form of system-environment coupling. Using a non-Markovian master equation, we further demonstrate the effectiveness of our continuous dynamical decoupling fields in protecting entanglement and the excellent performance of protected two-qubit gates in generating entanglement. The results are complementary to current studies of entanglement protection using universal dynamical decoupling pulse sequences.
We demonstrate the coherent control of spontaneous emission for a three-level atom located within a photonic band-gap structure with one resonant frequency near the edge of the photonic band gap. Spontaneous emission from the three-level atom can be totally suppressed or strongly enhanced depending on the relative phase between the steady-state control laser coupling the two upper levels and the pump laser pulse used to create an excited state of the atom in the form of a coherent superposition of the two upper levels. Unlike the free-space case, the steady-state inversion of the atomic system is strongly dependent on the externally prescribed initial conditions. This nonzero steady-state population is achieved by virtue of the localization of light in the vicinity of the emitting atom. It is robust to decoherence effects provided that the Rabi frequency of the control laser field-atom interaction exceeds the rate of dephasing interactions. As a result, such a system may be relevant for a single-atom, phase-sensitive, optical memory device on the atomic scale. The protected electric dipole within the photonic band gap provides a basis for a qubit to encode information for quantum computations.
In this thesis work, the quantum behavior of a superconducting circuit implementing a quantum bit or qubit is studied. With the use of resonant microwave pulses the full manipulation of the quantum state of this system is demonstrated: any rotation of the state vector around the Bloch sphere can be achieved and by using particular NMR inspired sequences of microwave pulses, the robustness of an operation against particular types of errors, like slow fluctuations of the transition frequency of the qubit, can be improved. The phenomenon of decoherence which drives the system from a quantum behavior to a classical one, has been characterized in the free evolution regime. By properly tuning the working point in the external parameter space, the qubit can be decoupled to first order from the fluctuations of its environment, thus enhancing coherence. In these optimal conditions, low frequency charge noise probably of microscopic origin appears to be the limiting source of decoherence for our system. The study of decoherence during driven evolution demonstrated that by suppressing the effect of those fluctuations of the environment slower than that of the driving field, the coherence of the qubit can be improved. Finally a new non-dissipative readout method based on microwave reflectometry has been set up, which improves the sensitivity and could in principle lead to a non-demolition measurement of the qubit state.
Dynamical decoupling protocols provide a versatile toolbox for robust control of quantum systems, suppressing noise that would otherwise limit their performance. This tutorial aims to provide an intuitive interpretation of these protocols. Written from an experimentalist's perspective, we use the Bloch sphere picture to visualise quantum dynamics for a range of sequences. Here each dynamical decoupling operation can be viewed as an "effective field vector", whilst the phase and population of the two-level system is encoded into a "Bloch vector". The two-level dynamics are calculated by the cross product between these two vectors, such that the quantum state represented by the Bloch vector rotates around the effective field vector. Several prominent control schemes are simulated using this picture, starting with a Rabi oscillation, followed by the Ramsey sequence and a selection of pulsed and continuous dynamical decoupling techniques. These sequences are engineered to preserve control of the quantum system for as long as possible, with their efficacy often quantified by a coherence time. We clarify the definition of the longitudinal T1, transverse T2 and inhomogeneous T2∗ coherence times, which are used across the literature. Each simulation has an accompanying animation to illustrate the protocol's two-level dynamics on the Bloch sphere. The custom simulation and Bloch sphere plotting scripts are also provided in an open access repository to allow the reader to reproduce, modify, and explore these results. Dynamical decoupling sequences have established themselves as an invaluable tool across the entire quantum technologies remit; by providing an open framework alongside this tutorial, we aim to make these protocols more accessible to new researchers discovering this thriving field.
In this thesis work, the quantum behavior of a superconducting circuit implementing a quantum bit or qubit is studied. With the use of resonant microwave pulses the full manipulation of the quantum state of this system is demonstrated: any rotation of the state vector around the Bloch sphere can be achieved and by using particular NMR inspired sequences of microwave pulses, the robustness of an operation against particular types of errors, like slow fluctuations of the transition frequency of the qubit, can be improved. The phenomenon of decoherence which drives the system from a quantum behavior to a classical one, has been characterized in the free evolution regime. By properly tuning the working point in the external parameter space, the qubit can be decoupled to first order from the fluctuations of its environment, thus enhancing coherence. In these optimal conditions, low frequency charge noise probably of microscopic origin appears to be the limiting source of decoherence for our system. The study of decoherence during driven evolution demonstrated that by suppressing the effect of those fluctuations of the environment slower than that of the driving field, the coherence of the qubit can be improved. Finally a new non-dissipative readout method based on microwave reflectometry has been set up, which improves the sensitivity and could in principle lead to a non-demolition measurement of the qubit state.
Entanglement is a vital resource for many quantum information processes. However, the unavoidable interaction between quantum system and its environment will lead to quantum decoherence. So protecting remote entanglement against decoherence is of great importance for realizing quantum information and quantum communication. In fact, there are many types of decoherences. Besides the depolarization and phase damping, amplitude damping is a typical decoherence mechanism. If we monitor the environments to guarantee that no excitation escapes from the system, the amplitude damping is modified into a weak measurement induced amplitude damping of the system. Amplitude damping decoherence can affect both single-qubit quantum states and multipartite entangled states. However, in most of previous quantum state protection schemes, the authors only pay attention to the single-qubit system or two-qubit system. Compared with bipartite entangled states, multipartite entangled states possess many advantages, but the entanglement property of multipartite entangled state is much more complicated than bipartite entanglement, so bipartite entanglement reversal (protection) scheme may not be suitable for multipartite case. Thus, in this paper, according to local pulse series and weak measurement, we propose an effective scheme for protecting two multipartite entangled states against amplitude damping, and these two multipartite states are Cluster state and Maximal slice (MS) state. Cluster state and MS state are two typical classes of multipartite entangled states, which play important roles in quantum computation and communication, respectively. These two states cannot be converted into each other with local operation and classical communication. Owing to its good operational and computable properties, here we choose negativity as a measure to quantify the multipartite entanglement. For the case of MS sate, no matter what the initial parameter is, when the local pulses are exerted on all qubits, the entanglement can be fixed around the entanglement of the initial state. Similarly, in the four-qubit cluster state case, if a series of flip operations is exerted on all qubits, it is shown that the multipartite entanglement can be recovered to the maximum 1.0. All these results show that this protocol can protect remote multipartite entanglement effectively. The physical mechanism behind this scheme is that the weak measurement combining with flip operation can balance the weight of different terms of the state, and move the entanglement toward the initial value. To summarize, our scheme is much simpler and feasible, which may warrant its experimental realization. Moreover, our scheme could be extended to protect other multipartite states.