With the development of quantum information and quantum computation science, quantum information processor has been widely used in different areas such as quantum simulation, quantum computation and quantum metrology and so on. To make quantum computer come true, we need to increase the number of controllable qubits of the system and improve the controllability to perform complex quantum manipulation. As a good experimental testbed for quantum information processing, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin system provides rich and sophisticated quantum control methods. In recent years a lot of multi-qubit experiments have been performed on the platform and a series of experimental technologies have been developed. In this paper, we firstly explain the difficulties of multi-qubit NMR experiments. Then by focusing on the experiment of 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state preparation and other relevant experiments, we review the technologies in multi-qubit experiments. Using the radio frequency selective method, the inhomogeneities of the radio frequency pulses are reduced and the spectral resolution is improved. After performing 1/2 spin selective sequence, we can regard the three methyl protons in the sample of crotonic acid as a single 1/2 spin nucleus and treat the whole molecule as a 7-qubit quantum information processor. We utilize Gauss pulses, Hermite pulses, composite pulses and gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) pulses to implement basic /2 and rotation operations. The GRAPE pulses are calculated by subspace GRAPE program to speed up the computation greatly. The errors of the basic pulses caused by chemical shift and J-coupling evolution can be estimated by the program of pulse compilation. It divides the errors of the pulses into a series of post-errors and pre-errors. A program of sequence compilation is used to eliminate the accumulated error of the whole pulse sequence, reduce the number of pulses and optimize the experimental duration. A variety of methods of quantum state tomography have been proposed to improve the efficiency of reading out information about quantum state. As an experimental example, we combine the above experimental technologies and perform the experiment of 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state preparation by using the method of cat state preparation. The sequence of cat state preparation consists of three steps:encoding procedure, phase cycling and decoding procedure. We use 14 experiments to realize the phase cycling and acquire the final 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state. The total duration of experimental sequence is about 132 ms. All the readout spectra have the similar shapes to the theoretical expectations. Finally we give an outlook for further research in this direction.
With the development of quantum information and quantum computation science, quantum information processor has been widely used in different areas such as quantum simulation, quantum computation and quantum metrology and so on. To make quantum computer come true, we need to increase the number of controllable qubits of the system and improve the controllability to perform complex quantum manipulation. As a good experimental testbed for quantum information processing, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin system provides rich and sophisticated quantum control methods. In recent years a lot of multi-qubit experiments have been performed on the platform and a series of experimental technologies have been developed. In this paper, we firstly explain the difficulties of multi-qubit NMR experiments. Then by focusing on the experiment of 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state preparation and other relevant experiments, we review the technologies in multi-qubit experiments. Using the radio frequency selective method, the inhomogeneities of the radio frequency pulses are reduced and the spectral resolution is improved. After performing 1/2 spin selective sequence, we can regard the three methyl protons in the sample of crotonic acid as a single 1/2 spin nucleus and treat the whole molecule as a 7-qubit quantum information processor. We utilize Gauss pulses, Hermite pulses, composite pulses and gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) pulses to implement basic /2 and rotation operations. The GRAPE pulses are calculated by subspace GRAPE program to speed up the computation greatly. The errors of the basic pulses caused by chemical shift and J-coupling evolution can be estimated by the program of pulse compilation. It divides the errors of the pulses into a series of post-errors and pre-errors. A program of sequence compilation is used to eliminate the accumulated error of the whole pulse sequence, reduce the number of pulses and optimize the experimental duration. A variety of methods of quantum state tomography have been proposed to improve the efficiency of reading out information about quantum state. As an experimental example, we combine the above experimental technologies and perform the experiment of 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state preparation by using the method of cat state preparation. The sequence of cat state preparation consists of three steps:encoding procedure, phase cycling and decoding procedure. We use 14 experiments to realize the phase cycling and acquire the final 7-qubit labelled pseudo-pure state. The total duration of experimental sequence is about 132 ms. All the readout spectra have the similar shapes to the theoretical expectations. Finally we give an outlook for further research in this direction.
In the last 20 years, there have been lots of novel developments and remarkable achievements in quantum information processing theoretically and experimentally. Among them, the coherent control of nuclear spin dynamics is a powerful tool for the experimental implementation of quantum schemes in liquid and solid nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system, especially in liquid-state NMR. Compared with other quantum information processing systems, NMR platform has many advantages such as the long coherence time, the precise manipulation and well-developed quantum control techniques, which make it possible to accurately control a quantum system with up to 12-qubits. Extensive applications of liquid-state NMR spectroscopy in quantum information processing such as quantum communication, quantum computing and quantum simulation have been thoroughly studied over half a century. There are also many outstanding researches in the recent several years. So we focus on the recent researches in this review article. First, we introduce the basic principle of the liquid-state NMR quantum computing and two new methods reported in the pseudo-pure state preparation which has more advantages than the traditional methods. The quantum noise-injection methods and the quantum tomography technology in liquid-state NMR are also mentioned. Then we overview Horrow-Hassidim-Lioyd algorithm, quantum support vector machine algorithm, duality quantum computing and their implementations in liquid-state NMR system. Also, we report recent researches about quantum simulations, including quantum tunneling, high-energy physics and topological sequences. Then we display the quantum cloud platform of our group. In order to let more people, either amateurs or professionals, embrace and more importantly participate in the tidal wave of quantum science, we launch our NMR quantum cloud computing (NMRCloudQ) service. Through NMRCloudQ, we offer a direct access to a real, physical spectrometer in our laboratory and encourage users to explore quantum phenomena and demonstrate quantum algorithms. Finally, we discuss the development prospects and development bottlenecks of NMR, and point out the prospects for the future development direction.
With the development of quantum information science, the active manipulation of quantum systems is becoming an important research frontier. To build realistic quantum information processors, one of the challenges is to implement arbitrary desired operations with high precision on quantum systems. A large number of quantum control methods and relevant numerical techniques have been put forward in recent years, such as quantum optimal control and quantum feedback control. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin systems offer an excellent testbed to develop benchmark tools and techniques for controlling quantum systems. In this review paper, we briefly introduce some of the basic control ideas developed for NMR systems in recent years. We first explain, for the liquid spin systems, the physics of various couplings and the causes of relaxation effects. These mechanisms govern the system dynamics, and thus are crucial for constructing rigorous and efficient control models. We also identify three types of available control means: 1) raido-frequency fields as coherent controls; 2) phase cycling, gradient fields and relaxation effects as non-unitary controls; 3) radiation damping effect as feedback control mechanism. Then, we elucidate some important control tasks, which may arise from the conventional NMR spectroscopy (e.g., pulse design and polarization transfer) or from quantum information science (e.g., algorithmic cooling and pseudo-pure state preparation). In the last part, we review some of the most important control methods that are applicable to NMR control tasks. For systems with a relatively small number of spins, it is possible to use analytic optimal control theory to realize the target unitary operations. However, for larger systems, numerical methods are necessary. The gradient ascent pulse engineering algorithm and pulse compiler techniques are the most successful techniques for implementing complicated quantum networks currently. There are some interesting topics of utilizing radiation damping and relaxation effects to achieve more powerful controls. Finally, we give an outline of the possible future work.
In this study, we report the experimental realization of seven-qubit Deutsch-Jozsa (D-J) algorithm and controlled phase-shift gates with improved precision using liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The experimental results have shown that transformationsU f in the seven-qubit D-J algorithm have been implemented with different pulse sequences, and whetherf is constant or balanced is determined by using only a single function call (U f ). Furthermore, we propose an experimental method to measure and correct the error in the controlled phase-shift gate that is simple and feasible in experiments, and can have precise phase shifts. These may offer the possibility of surmounting the difficulties of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in multi-qubit NMR quantum computers, more complicated experimental techniques, and the increase of gate errors due to using a large number of imperfect selective pulses. These are also applied to more complicated quantum algorithms with more qubits, such as quantum Fourier transformation and Shor’s algorithm.
Quantum simulations, where controllable quantum systems are used to simulate other quantum systems, originally proposed by Richard Feynman, are one of the most remarkable applications of quantum information science. Compared to computation, quantum simulations require much less number of qubits for the m to be practical. In the work described in this thesis, we have performed a few quantum simulations of small quantum systems using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance(NMR) techniques. These simulations have been used to experimentally demonstrate the underlying interesting quantum protocols. All the experiments presented have been carried out using liquid-state or liquid crystal NMR. Numerical pulse optimization techniques have been utilized in some of the experiments, to achieve better control over the spin systems.
The first chapter contains “Introduction” to quantum information processing, NMR, and numerical pulse optimization techniques. In chapter 2, we describe quantum simulation of a 3-spin Heisenberg-XY spin chain having only nearest neighbour interactions. Recently, spin chains having pre-engineered short-range interactions have been proposed to efficiently transfer quantum information between different parts of a quantum information processor. Other important proposals involving these spin chains include generating entangled states and universal quantum computation. However, such engineered interactions do not occur naturally in any system. In such a scenario, the experimental viability of these proposals can be tested by simulating the spin chains in other controllable quantum systems. In this work, we first theoretically study the time evolution of bipartite and tripartite entanglement measures for a 3-spin open ended XY spin chain. Then, by simulating the XY interactions in a 3-spin nuclear spin system, we experimentally generate, (i)a bipartite maximally(pseudo-)entangled state(Bell state) between end qubits, and(ii) multipartite(pseudo-)entangled states(Wand GHZ states),starting from separable pseudo-pure states. Bell state has been generated by using only the natural unitary evolution of the XY spin chain. W-state and GHZ-state have been generated by applying a single-qubit rotation to the second qubit, and a global rotation of all the three qubits respectively after the unitary evolution of the spin chain.
In chapter 3, we simulate a 3-spin quantum transverse Ising spin system in a triangular configuration, and show that multipartite quantum correlations can be used to distinguish between the frustrated and non-frustrated regimes in the ground state of this spin system. The ground state of the spin system has been prepared by using adiabatic state preparation method. Gradient ascent pulse engineering technique has been utilized to efficiently realize the adiabatic evolution of the spin system. To analyse the experimental ground state of the system, we employ two different multipartite quantum correlation measures, generated from monogamy studies of bipartite quantum correlations.
Chapter 4 contains a digital…
A three-qubit 13C solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system for quantum-information processing, based on the malonic acid molecule, is used to demonstrate high-fidelity universal quantum control via strongly modulating radio-frequency pulses. This control is achieved in the strong-coupling regime, in which the time scales of selective qubit addressing and of two-qubit interactions are comparable. State evolutions under the internal Hamiltonian in this regime are significantly more complex, in general, than those of typical liquid-state NMR systems. Moreover, the transformations generated by the strongly modulating pulses are shown to be robust against the types of ensemble inhomogeneity that dominate in the employed molecular crystal system. The secondary focus of the paper is upon detailed characterization of the malonic acid system. The internal Hamiltonian of the qubits is determined through spectral simulation. A pseudopure state preparation protocol is extended to make a precise measurement of the dephasing rate of a three-quantum coherence state under residual dipolar interactions. The spectrum of intermolecular 13C−−13C dipolar fields in the crystal is simulated, and the results compared with single-quantum dephasing data obtained using appropriate refocusing sequences. We conclude that solid-state NMR systems tailored for quantum-information processing have excellent potential for extending the investigations begun in the liquid-state systems to a greater number of qubits.
Quantum information processing is a multi-disciplinary science involving physics, mathematics, computer science, and even quantum chemistry. It is centred around the idea of manipulating physical systems at the quantum level, either for simulation of physical systems, or numerical computation. Although it has been known for almost a decade that a quantum computer would enable the solution of problems deemed infeasible classically, constructing one has been beyond today's capabilities. In this work we explore one proposed implementation of a quantum computer: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. We also develop a numerical software tool, a pulse sequence compiler, for use in the implementation of quantum computer programs on an NMR quantum computer. Our pulse sequence compiler takes as input the specifications of the molecule used as a quantum register, the desired quantum gate, and experimental data on the actual effects of RF pulses on a sample of the molecule, and outputs an optimum set of pre and post 'virtual' gates that minimize the error induced.