The description and control of decoherence of quantum bit systems have become a field of increasing interest during the last decade. We discuss different techniques to estimate and model decoherence sources of solid state quantum bit realizations. At first, we derive a microscopic, perturbation theoretical approach for Lindblad master equations of a spin-Boson model at low temperatures. A different sort of decoherence is investigate by means of the bistable fluctuator model. For this particular but nevertheless for solid state qubits relevant noise source, we present a suitably designed dynamical decoupling method (so-called quantum bang-bang). This works as a high-pass filter, suppressing low frequency parts of the noise most effectively and thus being a promising method to compensate the ubiquituous 1/f noise. Furthermore, we investigate the behaviour of a two coupled spin system exposed to collective and localized bath. For this dressed-spin system we receive by means of scaling-analysis in first order a quantum phase diagram. On that we can identify the various quantum dynamical and entanglement phases.
The description and control of decoherence of quantum bit systems have become a field of increasing interest during the last decade. We discuss different techniques to estimate and model decoherence sources of solid state quantum bit realizations. At first, we derive a microscopic, perturbation theoretical approach for Lindblad master equations of a spin-Boson model at low temperatures. A different sort of decoherence is investigate by means of the bistable fluctuator model. For this particular but nevertheless for solid state qubits relevant noise source, we present a suitably designed dynamical decoupling method (so-called quantum bang-bang). This works as a high-pass filter, suppressing low frequency parts of the noise most effectively and thus being a promising method to compensate the ubiquituous 1/f noise. Furthermore, we investigate the behaviour of a two coupled spin system exposed to collective and localized bath. For this dressed-spin system we receive by means of scaling-analysis in first order a quantum phase diagram. On that we can identify the various quantum dynamical and entanglement phases.
A high degree of quantum coherence is a crucial requirement for the implementation of quantum logic devices. Solid state nanodevices seem particularly promising from the point of view of integrability and flexibility in the design. However decoherence is a serious limitation, due to the presence of many types low energy excitations in the ``internal'' environment and of ``external'' sources due to the control circuitery. Here we study both kind of dephasing in a special implementation, the charge Josephson qubit, however many of our results are applicable to a large class of solid state qubits. This is the case of 1/f noise for which we introduce and study a model of an environment of bistable fluctuatiors. External sources of noise are analized in terms of a suitable harmonic oscillator environment and the explicit mapping on the spin boson model is presented. We perform a detailed investigation of various computation procedures (single shot measurements, repeated measurements) and discuss the problem of the information needed to characterize the effect of the environment. For a fluctuator environment with 1/f spectrum memory effects turn out to be important. Although in general information beyond the power spectrum is needed, in many situations this results in the knowledge of only one more microscopic parameter of the environment. This allows to determine which degrees of freedom of the environment are effective sources of decoherence in each different physical situation considered.
With the growing efforts in isolating solid-state qubits from external decoherence sources, the origins of noise inherent to the material start to play a relevant role. One representative example are charged impurities in the device material or substrate, which typically produce telegraph noise and can hence be modelled as bistable fluctuators. In order to demonstrate the possibility of the active suppression of the disturbance from a {\em single} fluctuator, we theoretically implement an elementary bang-bang control protocol. We numerically simulate the random walk of the qubit state on the Bloch sphere with and without bang-bang compensation by means of the stochastic Schrödinger equation and compare it with an analytical saddle point solution of the corresponding Langevin equation in the long-time limit. We find that the deviation with respect to the noiseless case is significantly reduced when bang-bang pulses are applied, being scaled down approximately by the ratio of the bang-bang period and the typical flipping time of the bistable fluctuation. Our analysis gives not only the effect of bang-bang control on the variance of these deviations, but also their entire distribution. As a result, we expect that bang-bang control works as a high-pass filter on the spectrum of noise sources. This indicates how the influence of 1/f-noise ubiquitous to the solid state world can be reduced.
Known as decoherence, the unavoidable interaction of a quantum system with its surrounding environment is usually considered to be detrimental for quantum information processing. In this thesis the coherent, open loop control of such open systems is studied. Concepts from quantum control theory and the theory of open quantum system are adopted in order to fight decoherence and implement quantum gates in a noiseless manner. In particular, Lie algebraic methods and numerical optimization tools are used to investigate the control properties of a single spin interacting with a spin environment. We show that, independent of the size of the environment, every unitary transformation can be implemented on the system spin through a single control field. We proceed by investigating dynamical decoupling, a method to suppress the interactions with the environment, for finite- and for in- finite dimensional systems. We prove that every finite dimensional system can be protected from decoherence, even if the environment is infinite dimensional, whereas for noise described by a Lindblad master equation dynamical decoupling will never succeed. This will lead to a new method to distinguish decoherence from intrinsic noise terms. We further prove that not every infinite dimensional system can be protected from decoherence through dynamical decoupling. Afterwards we investigate dynamical decoupling of systems that are described by quadratic Hamiltonians, showing that such interactions can always be suppressed with two simple operations. In the last part we investigate the coherent control of a Lindblad master equation. We show that a strong noise process exhibiting a decoherence free subspace can substantially increase the number of unitary operations that can be implemented, allowing us to fully control parts of the system. Afterwards we develop a scheme to make Hamiltonians and Lindbladians commutative by adding an auxiliary system. The old, possibly non-commutative dynamics, is recovered through a non-selective measurement.
A linear coupling model of a spin system with bosonic modes is a typical model to theoretically evaluate decoherence. In this contribution, we consider a dynamical control of decoherence of entanglement in a spin system consisting of an electron spin and nuclear spins (namely, a spin bus system) coupled with bosons whose modes are in resonance with individual spins. Numerical simulations show that bang-bang pulses with a realistic duty ratio can suppress decoherence considerably in an entangled two-qubit system. Simulation results indicate one phenomenon: a very large, as well as very small, dissipation rate of bosons results in a small decoherence.
The efficiency of the future devices for quantum information processing will be limited mostly by the finite decoherence rates of the qubits. 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. Under these conditions, the material-inherent sources of noise start to play a crucial role. In most cases, the noise that the quantum device demonstrates has a 1/ f spectrum. This suggests that the environment that destroys the phase coherence of the qubit can be thought of as a system of two-state fluctuators, which experience random hops between their states. In this short review, the current state of the theory of the decoherence due to the qubit interaction with the fluctuators is discussed. The effect of such an environment on two different protocols of the qubit manipulations, free induction and echo signal, is described. It turns out that in many important cases the noise produced by the fluctuators is non-Gaussian. Consequently, the results of the interaction of the qubit with the fluctuators are not determined by the pair correlation function alone. We describe the effect of the fluctuators using the so-called spin-fluctuator model. Being quite realistic, this model allows one to exactly evaluate the qubit dynamics in the presence of one fluctuator. This solution is found, and its features, including non-Gaussian effects, are analyzed in detail. We extend this consideration to systems of large numbers of fluctuators, which interact with the qubit and lead to the 1/ f noise. We discuss existing experiments on the Josephson qubit manipulation and try to identify non-Gaussian behavior.
During the last decade the field of quantum information has seen considerable progress both
theoretically and experimentally. The building block of this theory is the so-called qubit,
the quantum counterpart of the classical bit. It turns out that spin degrees of freedom
of quantum particles are among the most promising candidates for quantum information
processing and computation. Thus, a deep understanding of the different processes that
govern the dynamics of these objects is of fundamental importance. For instance, the decoherence
process, caused the coupling of the qubits to their surrounding environment, is
the main obstacle to quantum information processing: it leads them to lose their quantum
coherence and thus behave classically. In addition, quantum systems exhibit correlations
that have no classical counterpart. This phenomenon is called entanglement and is the
vital resource for quantum teleportation and quantum computing. Decoherence and entanglement
dynamics were extensively studied within the framework of the Markovian
approximation using the master equation approach. However, due to the non-commuting
character of quantum observables, only few models are known to be exactly solvable.
Moreover, many spin systems display a strongly non-Markovian behavior. This thesis is
devoted to the development of new techniques for deriving the exact dynamics of spin
qubits, coupled through Heisenberg and/or Ising interactions to spin environments that
have internal dynamics. The basic idea behind these techniques is to use the underlying
symmetries exhibited by the Hamitonian operators of the composite systems. This allows
for the study of problems related to decoherence and entanglement.