Perfect State Transfer is known to be possible on complex next-to-nearest-neighbor structures of qubits. The complexity of these networks coupled with the pervasive imperfections of the real world can lead to shortcomings in their practical construction. We analyze several realistic categories of flaws in the networks and show that they can have a harsh effect on the network’s performance. Dynamical decoupling is a known quantum error correction algorithm that can be used for partial or complete mitigation of undesired artefacts in quantum systems. We show here that dynamical decoupling can, in principle, also be used to stabilize the complex next-to-nearest-neighbor networks of qubits. We compare the proposed dynamical decoupling schemes with a baseline of dynamical decoupling scheme that eliminates all but one path to quantum state transfer on the network, thus effectively transforming it to a nearest-neighbor chain.
Perfect State Transfer is known to be possible on complex next-to-nearest-neighbor structures of qubits. The complexity of these networks coupled with the pervasive imperfections of the real world can lead to shortcomings in their practical construction. We analyze several realistic categories of flaws in the networks and show that they can have a harsh effect on the network’s performance. Dynamical decoupling is a known quantum error correction algorithm that can be used for partial or complete mitigation of undesired artefacts in quantum systems. We show here that dynamical decoupling can, in principle, also be used to stabilize the complex next-to-nearest-neighbor networks of qubits. We compare the proposed dynamical decoupling schemes with a baseline of dynamical decoupling scheme that eliminates all but one path to quantum state transfer on the network, thus effectively transforming it to a nearest-neighbor chain.
State transfer across discrete quantum networks is one of the elementary tasks of quantum information processing. Its aim is the faithful placement of information into a specific position in the network. However, all physical systems suffer from imperfections, which can severely limit the transfer fidelity. We present selective dynamical decoupling schemes which are capable of stabilizing imperfect quantum state transfer protocols on the model of a bent linear qubit chain. The efficiency of the schemes is tested and verified in numerical simulations on a number of realistic cases. The simulations demonstrate that these selective dynamical decoupling schemes are capable of suppressing unwanted errors in quantum state transfer protocols efficiently.
In the field of quantum information, a major challenge is to protect and shield quantum systems from environmental influences, which cause dissipation and decoherence. One approach to address this problem is called dynamical decoupling, where we act on a quantum system with a series of fast and strong local control operations. If done correctly, the system's state gets rotated in discrete steps in its state space in such a way that the effects of the environment cancel up to a certain order. In the first part of this thesis, we will introduce the basics of dynamical decoupling and present a new approach for constructing dynamical decoupling schemes based on sequences of Weyl operators on networks of qudits. This approach goes beyond merely protecting a quantum system, as it is also capable of altering existing Hamiltonian interactions in ways suitable for quantum simulation purposes. We will also investigate how imperfect controls influence the effectiveness of dynamical decoupling and focus particularly on stochastic noise. In the second part of the thesis, we study concrete scenarios for the application of dynamical decoupling. First, we consider the task of quantum state transfer on a linear chain of qubits and use decoupling to protect the transfer from detrimental influences caused by a bend in the chain. We also look at how to design the specific interaction strengths required on the chain to make the state transfer work and extend this result to chains of qudits. Another chapter deals with decoupling the atomic centre-of-mass motion of a trapped atom or ion in a cavity interacting with a radiation field. Finally, we use decoupling to execute sequences of one- and two-qubit quantum gates on a chain of coupled qubits. Particular care is taken to ensure high fidelity operations in the presence of imperfect decoupling pulses.
Dynamical decoupling can be used to preserve arbitrary quantum states despite undesired interactions with the environment, using control Hamiltonians affecting the system only. We present a system-independent analysis of dynamical decoupling based on leading order decoupling error estimates, valid for bounded-strength environments. Using as a key tool a renormalization transformation of the effective system-bath coupling Hamiltonian, we delineate the reliability domain of dynamical decoupling used for quantum state preservation, in a general setting for a single qubit. We specifically analyze and compare two deterministic dynamical decoupling schemes---periodic and concatenated---and distinguish between two limiting cases of fast versus slow environments. We prove that concatenated decoupling outperforms periodic decoupling over a wide range of parameters. These results are obtained for both ``ideal'' (zero-width) and realistic (finite-width) pulses This work extends and generalizes our earlier work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 180501 (2005)].
Two topics in the field of quantum information processing, optimized dynamical error suppression and quantum algorithms, are considered here. ? The computational errors induced by the surrounding environment is one of the main obstacles in building a quantum computer. Engineering powerful techniques to combat errors in quantum devices is highly demanding. In the first part of this thesis, I focus on one quantum error correction technique, dynamical decoupling (DD), introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is dedicated to nested UDD (NUDD), a highly efficient decoupling scheme that utilizes the decoupling characteristics of UDD by multi-layer nesting. UDD (1-layer NUDD) is an optimal DD method for eliminating single-qubit general dephasing, and QDD (2-layer NUDD) is a near-optimal DD method for eliminating one qubit general decoherence. I present a rigorous analytical proof of the performance and universality of QDD/NUDD, and obtain an explicit formula for the decoupling order of each error type, which elucidates the relationship between the error type and characteristics of NUDD. From the explicit formula, a NUDD scheme can be designed accordingly such that optimal efficiency of NUDD is achieved. Moreover, the highly efficient error cancellation mechanism is revealed by the analysis. The proof of QDD has been published in [31], and the proof of NUDD will be submitted for publication shortly. ? Chapter 3 is devoted to the Adiabatic Quantum Computation (AQC). In this work (published in [44]), a general time-optimal strategy, which in principle can optimize any quantum adiabatic algorithm for which the gap is known or can be estimated, is formulated. In addition, I present a natural differential-geometric framework for AQC.
One of the most significant hurdles to be overcome on the path to practical quantum information processors is dealing with quantum errors. Dynamical decoupling is a particularly promising approach that complements conventional quantum error correction by eliminating some correlated errors without the overhead of additional qubits. In practice, the control pulses used for decoupling are imperfect and thus introduce errors which can accumulate after many pulses. These instrumental errors can destroy the quantum state. Here we examine several dynamical decoupling sequences, and their concatenated variants, using electron spin resonance of donor electron spins in a 28Si crystal. All of the sequences cancel phase noise arising from slowly fluctuating magnetic fields in our spectrometer, but only those sequences based upon alternating π-rotations about the X- and Y-axes in the rotating frame (XYXY sequences) demonstrate the ability to store an arbitrary quantum state. By comparing the experimental results with a detailed theoretical analysis we demonstrate that the superior performance of XYXY sequences arises from the fact that they are self-correcting for the dominant instrumental pulse errors in magnetic resonance experiments. We further find that concatenated sequences perform better than the periodic variants, maintaining near 100% fidelities for spin states even after several hundred control pulses. Intuitively, one would expect the instrumental error to increase with the number of pulses in the sequence but we show that the dominant first-order error does not increase when concatenating the XYXY sequence.
Quantum computation (QC) relies on the ability to implement high-fidelity quantum gate operations and successfully preserve quantum state coherence. One of the most challenging obstacles for reliable QC is overcoming the inevitable interaction between a quantum system and its environment. Unwanted interactions result in decoherence processes that cause quantum states to deviate from a desired evolution, consequently leading to computational errors and loss of coherence. Dynamical decoupling (DD) is one such method, which seeks to attenuate the effects of decoherence by applying strong and expeditious control pulses solely to the system. Provided the pulses are applied over a time duration sufficiently shorter than the correlation time associated with the environment dynamics, DD effectively averages out undesirable interactions and preserves quantum states with a low probability of error, or fidelity loss. In this study various aspects of this approach are studied from sequence construction to applications of DD to protecting QC. First, a comprehensive examination of the error suppression properties of a near-optimal DD approach is given to understand the relationship between error suppression capabilities and the number of required DD control pulses in the case of ideal, instantaneous pulses. While such considerations are instructive for examining DD efficiency, i.e., performance vs the number of control pulses, high-fidelity DD in realizable systems is difficult to achieve due to intrinsic pulse imperfections which further contribute to decoherence. As a second consideration, it is shown how one can overcome this hurdle and achieve robustness and recover high-fidelity DD in the presence of faulty control pulses using Genetic Algorithm optimization and sequence symmetrization. Thirdly, to illustrate the implementation of DD in conjunction with QC, the utilization of DD and quantum error correction codes (QECCs) as a protection method for adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) is discussed. A performance comparison between two deterministic DD schemes is given, where preference towards one particular method is found due to sequence structure and procedure from which higher accuracy sequences are generated.