Abstract Time-optimal unitary operating quantum systems and energy-efficient quantum gates are vital in quantum engineering. Here, we establish the connection between the energetic cost and the quantum speed limit for parallel evolving of a quantum system. Our results show that the energetic cost is the consequence of parallel transporting speed limit, which opens up the critical role of parallel transport of the quantum state for the quantum technologies such as the quantum simulation, the quantum information processing. Our investigations present a route to construct the energetic-efficient quantum gate. In addition, our theoretical framework provides an alternative method for calculating quantum speed limit. Two typical relevant systems are employed to illustrate our results: the spin-1/2 particle in the rotating magnetic field and the entanglement swap gate.
Abstract Time-optimal unitary operating quantum systems and energy-efficient quantum gates are vital in quantum engineering. Here, we establish the connection between the energetic cost and the quantum speed limit for parallel evolving of a quantum system. Our results show that the energetic cost is the consequence of parallel transporting speed limit, which opens up the critical role of parallel transport of the quantum state for the quantum technologies such as the quantum simulation, the quantum information processing. Our investigations present a route to construct the energetic-efficient quantum gate. In addition, our theoretical framework provides an alternative method for calculating quantum speed limit. Two typical relevant systems are employed to illustrate our results: the spin-1/2 particle in the rotating magnetic field and the entanglement swap gate.
Abstract While recent breakthroughs in quantum computing promise the nascence of the quantum information age, quantum states remain delicate to control. Moreover, the required energy budget for large scale quantum applications has only sparely been considered. Addressing either of these issues necessitates a careful study of the most energetically efficient implementation of elementary quantum operations. In the present analysis, we show that this optimal control problem can be solved within the powerful framework of quantum speed limits. To this end, we derive state-independent lower bounds on the energetic cost, from which we find the universally optimal implementation of unitary quantum gates, for both single and N -qubit operations.
The implementation of information processing on a quantum device is a fundamental challenge for many technologies. As a matter of fact, the faster one wants to implement a quantum operation, the higher is the thermodynamic cost of realizing the quantum process. Here, we theoretically propose and experimentally verify a trade-off between quantum speed and energy cost using Schatten 2-norm. Our findings demonstrate that this trade-off remains tight for any instant of time, whether dealing with initial eigenstates or initial thermal equilibrium states, as illustrated by the Landau-Zehner model. This observation underscores the significance of coherence of the evolved states. By extending our method to open system, we find that quantum speed can be significantly affected by environmental decoherence effect. These results illuminate the fundamental limits of quantum state dynamics and hold promise for potential applications in quantum sensing and quantum computing.
Achieving effectively adiabatic dynamics is a ubiquitous goal in almost all areas of quantum physics. Here, we study the speed with which a quantum system can be driven when employing transitionless quantum driving. As a main result, we establish a rigorous link between this speed, the quantum speed limit, and the (energetic) cost of implementing such a shortcut to adiabaticity. Interestingly, this link elucidates a trade-off between speed and cost, namely, that instantaneous manipulation is impossible as it requires an infinite cost. These findings are illustrated for two experimentally relevant systems-the parametric oscillator and the Landau-Zener model-which reveal that the spectral gap governs the quantum speed limit as well as the cost for realizing the shortcut.
Cloud-based quantum computers do not provide users with access to hardware-level information such as the underlying Hamiltonians, which obstructs the characterization of their physical properties. We propose a method to infer the energy scales of gate Hamiltonians in such black-box quantum processors using only user-accessible data, by exploiting quantum speed limits. Specifically, we reinterpret the Margolus-Levitin and Mandelstam-Tamm bounds as estimators of the energy expectation value and variance, respectively, and relate them to the shortest time for the processor to orthogonalize a quantum state. This shortest gate time, expected to lie on the nanosecond scale, is inferred from job execution times measured in seconds by employing gate-time amplification. We apply the method to IBM's superconducting quantum processor and estimate the energy scales associated with single-, two-, and three-qubit gates. The order of estimated energy is consistent with typical drive energies in superconducting qubit systems, suggesting that current gate operations approach the quantum speed limit. Our results demonstrate that fundamental energetic properties of black-box quantum computers can be quantitatively accessed through operational time measurements, reflecting the conjugate relationship between time and energy imposed by the uncertainty principle.
Adiabatic time-optimal quantum controls are extensively used in quantum technologies to break the constraints imposed by short coherence times. However, practically it is crucial to consider the trade-off between the quantum evolution speed and instantaneous energy cost of process because of the constraints in the available control Hamiltonian. Here, we experimentally show that using a transmon qubit that, even in the presence of vanishing energy gaps, it is possible to reach a highly time-optimal adiabatic quantum driving at low energy cost in the whole evolution process. This validates the recently derived general solution of the quantum Zermelo navigation problem, paving the way for energy-efficient quantum control which is usually overlooked in conventional speed-up schemes, including the well-known counter-diabatic driving. By designing the control Hamiltonian based on the quantum speed limit bound quantified by the changing rate of phase in the interaction picture, we reveal the relationship between the quantum speed limit and instantaneous energy cost. Consequently, we demonstrate fast and high-fidelity quantum adiabatic processes by employing energy-efficient driving strengths, indicating a promising strategy for expanding the applications of time-optimal quantum controls in superconducting quantum circuits.
The speed of quantum evolution is limited under finite energy resources. While most quantum speed limits (QSLs) are formulated in terms of quantum states, they can be extended to the evolution operator itself, and thus impose fundamental limits on how quickly logical gate operations can be implemented on a quantum computer. Here, we derive a general, tight QSL that holds for any unitary evolution under the constraint that the spectral width of the Hamiltonian is bounded. We apply this result to obtain QSLs for several standard quantum gates, including Hadamard, CNOT, and Toffoli gates, finding that the QSL can vary significantly across different gates, including ones with the same entangling power. These findings can be understood geometrically using the Space Curve Quantum Control formalism, which maps unitary evolution to space curves in Euclidean space. In this formalism, the problem of finding QSLs is recast as the problem of finding minimal-length curves obeying a curvature bound. We find that time-optimal gates map to helices of varying dimensions, and that QSLs can be understood from the perspective of a bottleneck principle in which the operator that evolves the slowest governs the minimal gate time.