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Shorcuts to adiabaticity with quantum non-demolition measurements.

Raphaël Menu, Giovanna Morigi

Published Jul 26, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The realization of quantum adiabatic dynamics is at the core of implementations of adiabatic quantum computers. One major issue is to efficiently compromise between the long time scales required by the adiabatic protocol and the detrimental effects of the environment, which set an upper bound to the time scale of the operation. In this work we propose a protocol which achieves fast adiabatic dynamics by coupling the system to an external environment by the means of a quantum-non-demolition (QND) Hamiltonian. We analyse the infidelity of adiabatic transfer for a Landau-Zener problem in the presence of QND measurement, where the qubit couples to a meter which in turn quickly dissipates. We analyse the protocol's fidelity as a function of the strength of the QND coupling and of the relaxation time of the meter. In the limit where the decay rate of the ancilla is the largest frequency scale of the dynamics, the QND coupling induces an effective dephasing in the adiabatic basis. Optimal conditions for adiabaticity are found when the coupling with the meter induces dissipative dynamics which suppresses unwanted diabatic transitions.

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The realization of quantum adiabatic dynamics is at the core of implementations of adiabatic quantum computers. One major issue is to efficiently compromise between the long time scales required by the adiabatic protocol and the detrimental effects of the environment, which set an upper bound to the time scale of the operation. In this work we propose a protocol which achieves fast adiabatic dynamics by coupling the system to an external environment by the means of a quantum-non-demolition (QND) Hamiltonian. We analyse the infidelity of adiabatic transfer for a Landau-Zener problem in the presence of QND measurement, where the qubit couples to a meter which in turn quickly dissipates. We analyse the protocol's fidelity as a function of the strength of the QND coupling and of the relaxation time of the meter. In the limit where the decay rate of the ancilla is the largest frequency scale of the dynamics, the QND coupling induces an effective dephasing in the adiabatic basis. Optimal conditions for adiabaticity are found when the coupling with the meter induces dissipative dynamics which suppresses unwanted diabatic transitions.
We propose a protocol that achieves fast adiabatic transfer between two orthogonal states of a qubit by coupling with an ancilla. The qubit undergoes Landau-Zener dynamics, whereas the coupling realizes a time-dependent Hamiltonian, which is diagonal in the spin's instantaneous Landau-Zener eigenstates. The ancilla (or meter), in turn, couples to a thermal bath such that the overall dynamics is incoherent. We analyze the protocol's fidelity as a function of the strength of the coupling and of the relaxation rate of the meter. When the meter's decay rate is the largest frequency scale of the dynamics, the spin dynamics is encompassed by a master equation describing dephasing of the spin in the instantaneous eigenbasis. In this regime, the fidelity of adiabatic transfer improves as the bath temperature is increased. Surprisingly, the adiabatic transfer is significantly more efficient in the opposite regime, where the timescale of the ancilla dynamics is comparable to the characteristic spin timescale. Here, for low temperatures the coupling with the ancilla tends to suppress diabatic transitions via effective cooling. The protocol can be efficiently implemented by means of a pulsed, stroboscopic coupling with the ancilla and is robust against moderate fluctuations of the experimental parameters.
An adiabatic method for a single-shot non-demolition measurement of the phase qubit is suggested. The qubit is inductively coupled to a low-frequency resonator, which in turn is connected with a classical measurement device (phase meter). The resonator drives adiabatic oscillations of the supercurrent in the qubit loop. The back reaction of the qubit loop on the resonator depends on the qubit state. Measuring the phase shift of the resonator’s oscillations one can determine the state of the qubit. Numerical computations with available experimental parameters show that the phase difference between the two qubit states increases at a rate of 0.0044 rad/ns with the fidelity of about 0.9989 and the measurement time of about 100 ns. The fidelity of the measurement is estimated taking into consideration possible quantum transitions inside and outside the qubit manifold. An increase of the phase difference is possible but it is linked to a reduction of the fidelity. The requirements for the reproducibility of the qubit and resonator parameters are formulated.
Quantum adiabatic dynamics is the crucial element of adiabatic quantum computing and quantum annealing. Shortcuts to adiabaticity enable acceleration of the computational time by suppressing unwanted non-adiabatic processes with designed classical fields. Here, we consider quantum state transfer in the Landau-Zener model, which exemplifies the key elements of quantum adiabatic dynamics. We argue that non-adiabatic transitions can be suppressed by autonomous quantum dynamics, which involves coupling the Landau-Zener qubit to a second quantum system. By tuning the coupling strength, the composite quantum dynamics can reduce the probability of unwanted processes by more than two orders of magnitude. This is a prime example of control where the quantum properties of the control fields are key for implementing shortcuts to adiabaticity.
Efficient adiabatic control schemes, where one steers a quantum system along an adiabatic path ensuring minimal excitations while achieving a desired final state, that enable fast, high-fidelity operations are essential for any practical quantum computation. However, current optimization protocols are not universally tractable due to stringent requirements imposed by the microscopic systems encoding the qubit, including complex energy level structures and unwanted transitions, and generally require a trade-off between speed and fidelity of the operation. Here, we address these challenges by developing a general framework for optimal control based on the quantum metric tensor. This framework allows for fast and high-fidelity adiabatic pulses, even for a dense energy spectrum, based solely on the Hamiltonian of the system instead of the time evolution propagator and independent of the size of the underlying Hilbert space. Furthermore, our framework suppresses diabatic transitions and state-dependent crosstalk effects without the need for additional control fields. As an example, we study the adiabatic charge transfer in a double quantum dot to find optimal control pulses with improved performance. We show that for the geometric protocol, the transfer fidelities are lower bounded F>99%\mathcal{F}>99\%F>99% for ultrafast $20~\mbox{ns}$ pulses, regardless of the size of the anti-crossing, while being robust against miscalibration errors and quasistatic noise.
We have studied the decoherence properties of adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) in the presence of in general non-Markovian, e.g., low-frequency, noise. The developed description of the incoherent Landau-Zener transitions shows that the global AQC maintains its properties even for decoherence larger than the minimum gap at the anticrossing of the two lowest-energy levels. The more efficient local AQC, however, does not improve scaling of the computation time with the number of qubits nnn as in the decoherence-free case. The scaling improvement requires phase coherence throughout the computation, limiting the computation time and the problem size nnn.
42:365303] as a means to make fast changes in the Hamiltonian without exciting transitions. Such driving in principle allows one to realize arbitrarily fast annealing protocols or implement fast dissipationless driving, circumventing standard adiabatic limitations requiring infinitesimally slow rates. These ideas were tested and used both experimentally and theoretically in small systems, but in larger chaotic systems, it is known that exact counterdiabatic protocols do not exist. In this work, we develop a simple variational approach allowing one to find the best possible counterdiabatic protocols given physical constraints, like locality. These protocols are easy to derive and implement both experimentally and numerically. We show that, using these approximate protocols, one can drastically suppress heating and increase fidelity of quantum annealing protocols in complex many-particle systems. In the fast limit, these protocols provide an effective dual description of adiabatic dynamics, where the coupling constant plays the role of time and the counterdiabatic term plays the role of the Hamiltonian.