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Entropy

Quantum Control by Few-Cycles Pulses: The Two-Level Problem

François Peyraut, Frédéric Holweck, S. Guérin

Published Jan 22, 2023• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the problem of population transfer in a two-states system driven by an external electromagnetic field featuring a few cycles, until the extreme limit of two or one cycle. Taking the physical constraint of zero-area total field into account, we determine strategies leading to ultrahigh-fidelity population transfer despite the failure of the rotating wave approximation. We specifically implement adiabatic passage based on adiabatic Floquet theory for a number of cycles as low as 2.5 cycles, finding and making the dynamics follow an adiabatic trajectory connecting the initial and targeted states. Nonadiabatic strategies with shaped or chirped pulses, extending the π-pulse regime to two- or single-cycle pulses, are also derived.

DOI
10.3390/e25020212

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We investigate the problem of population transfer in a two-states system driven by an external electromagnetic field featuring a few cycles, until the extreme limit of two or one cycle. Taking the physical constraint of zero-area total field into account, we determine strategies leading to ultrahigh-fidelity population transfer despite the failure of the rotating wave approximation. We specifically implement adiabatic passage based on adiabatic Floquet theory for a number of cycles as low as 2.5 cycles, finding and making the dynamics follow an adiabatic trajectory connecting the initial and targeted states. Nonadiabatic strategies with shaped or chirped pulses, extending the π-pulse regime to two- or single-cycle pulses, are also derived.
Population inversion from an initial quantum state to a desired quantum state represents an exciting new frontier for quantum manipulation; that frontier is endowed with a strong interdisciplinary character and connections to other scientific fields, including atomic, molecular, and optical physics, as well as in solid-state devices, for fundamental studies, nuclear magnetic resonance and other spectroscopic techniques, metrology, interferometry, optical control of chemical reactions or quantum-information applications. Two-level systems are ubiquitous in these areas, and the driving of a population inversion is an important operation. So far various schemes for population transfer to a target state from an initial state have been proposed in theory and implemented in experiment. To be useful, such methods must, of course, be reliable, fast, and robust. Most literatures on two-level models investigated population inversion, which could be modelled by infinite-time processes. In this paper, by using a composite adiabatic passage (CAP) technique—in which the single pulse driving the quantum transition is replaced by a sequence of pulses with well-defined control phases, we investigate the population inversion problem of two-level quantum system with a finite duration. We take a sinusoidally varying pulse model that continuously vanishes at the beginning and the end of the finite duration as an example. The high-fidelity population inversion of the two-level system with finite duration is achieved. We discuss the effects of both coupling strength and detuning strength on the transition probability. It is found that this protocol could suppress the oscillations in the transition probability and reduce the admissible error bellow the 10 -4 quantum computation benchmark. The fidelity can arrive at 1, even with simple three- and five-composite pulse sequences. The protocol combines the advantages of adiabatic passage and composite pulses techniques. By choosing the composite phases appropriately, a high-fidelity, fast, stable and extremely robust complete population inversion is achieved for the finite-time two-level model. The values of the composite phases are universal for they do not depend on the pulse shapes and the chirp as long as the latter satisfy the symmetry property. Furthermore, the classical Hamiltonian is applied to describe the dynamic properties of the quantum system and further verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed CAP technique. The results we present here are general and in principle apply to any two- and multi-level quantum systems. The accuracy of the CAP technique and its robustness against parameter variations make the protocol suitable for ultrahigh-fidelity quantum manipulation. We believe that the protocol can be widely used in many different areas of science, ranging from the quantum information, the quantum chemical, and the quantum optics to the ultracold atomic and molecular physics.
Coherent population transfer in quantum systems is of fundamental importance in many fields such as atomic and molecular collision dynamics, and information processing for qubit systems. Stimulated Raman nonadiabatic passage technique, when implemented in an externally driven three-level system, provides an efficient approach for realizing accelerated population transfer while maintaining robust quantum coherence, with no need of rotating wave approximation. However, previous protocols employ multiple pulses and imply that Rabi frequencies have a few oscillations during dynamical evolution. In this work, under the condition of two-photon resonance, we use a gauge transformation method to inversely design a Λ-configuration three-level system that can be solved exactly. By using SU(3) transformation, we establish the relationship between Schrödinger representation and gauge representation, where the effective Hamiltonian is an Abelian operator. Subsequently, we construct the desired Hamiltonian and further investigate its dynamic behavior. The result shows that by imposing appropriate boundary conditions on the control parameters, high-fidelity population transfer can be achieved in ideal evolution. In addition, for the practical case with pulse truncation and intermediate state decay, the fidelities of specific models can reach about 99.996% and 99.983%, respectively. Compared with other existing nonadiabatic quantum control schemes, the present scheme has the distinctive advantages. We achieve the required quantum control by applying only a few sets of Stokes and pump pulses without introducing any additional microwave field. This method does not exhibit Rabi oscillations in the dynamic process, nor does it produce singularities in the pulse itself.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate the method of population transfer by piecewise adiabatic passage between two quantum states. Coherent excitation of a two-level system with a train of ultrashort laser pulses is shown to reproduce the effect of an adiabatic passage, conventionally achieved with a single frequency-chirped pulse. By properly adjusting the amplitudes and phases of the pulses in the excitation pulse train, we achieve complete and robust population transfer to the target state. The piecewise nature of the process suggests a possibility for the selective population transfer in complex quantum systems.
In the physics literature it is common to see the rotating wave approximation and the adiabatic approximation used to justify the use of chirped pulses for two-level quantum systems driven by one external field, in particular when the resonance frequency of the system is not known precisely. Both approximations need relatively long time and are essentially based on averaging theory of dynamical systems. Unfortunately, the two approximations cannot be done independently since, in a sense, the two time scales interact. The purpose of this paper is to study how the cascade of the two approximations can be justified and how large becomes the final time as the fidelity goes to one, while preserving the robustness of the adiabatic strategy. Our main result gives a precise quantification of the uncertainty interval of the resonance frequency for which the strategy works. We believe that this result, beside its mathematical interest, could be useful in experimental situations.
Population transfer via chirped rapid adiabatic passage is studied using open quantum and semiclassical models, with and without the rotating-wave approximation. A time-dependent variational approach based on the multiple-Davydov D2_22​ trial state is employed to simulate the quantum models with an arbitrary finite mean photon number. We examine the accuracy of both the semiclassical field description and the rotating-wave approximation. Robust population transfer is identified over a wide parameter regime controlled by the laser spectral chirp and is found to be insensitive to the spin--phonon coupling strength, Gaussian pulse area, and energy gap of the two-level system.