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Chinese Journal of Physics

Non-destructive direct characterization of unitary dynamics for arbitrary qubit systems

Zhiyuan Wang, Zijing Zhang

Published May 30, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/j.cjph.2025.05.041

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Quantum process tomography (QPT) is a crucial technique for characterizing unknown quantum channels. However, traditional QPT methods encounter scalability problems as the particle numbers increase, requiring exponentially more state preparations and measurement operators. The characteristics of sparse target channels (e.g., multiqubit phase-shift gates) can be obtained by measuring only a few specific matrix elements without requiring global QPT. Therefore, direct quantum channel characterization is vital. This paper proposes a direct protocol for both qubit and qudit systems that extracts specific process matrix elements without full reconstruction. The measurement operator requirements remain independent of system size and dimensionality. Notably, the proposed protocol uses nondestructive measurements and preserves qubits after evolution through unknown processes for potential reuse, making it uniquely promising for applications such as real-time monitoring of noise processes in quantum error correction and real-time feedback control requiring quantum state preservation. To validate the theoretical correctness of our approach, we conducted experimental demonstrations of both the unitary and non-unitary processes of single qubits using a nuclear magnetic resonance system on the SpinQ quantum cloud platform. The experimental results confirmed the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method.
Quantum computers present a compelling platform for the study of open quantum systems, namely the non-unitary dynamics of a system. Here, we investigate and report digital simulations of Markovian, non-unitary dynamics that converge to a unique steady state. The steady state is programmed as a desired target state, yielding semblance to a quantum state preparation protocol. By delegating ancilla qubits and systems qubits, the system state is driven to the target state by repeatedly performing the following steps: (1) executing a designated system-ancilla entangling circuit, (2) measuring the ancilla qubits, and (3) re-initializing ancilla qubits to known states through active reset. While the ancilla qubits are measured and reinitialized to known states, the system qubits undergo a non-unitary evolution and are steered from arbitrary initial states to desired target states. We show results of the method by preparing arbitrary qubit states and qutrit (three-level) states on contemporary quantum computers. We also demonstrate that the state convergence can be accelerated by utilizing the readouts of the ancilla qubits to guide the protocol in a non-blind manner. Our work serves as a nontrivial example that incorporates and characterizes essential operations such as qubit reuse (qubit reset), entangling circuits, and measurement. These operations are not only vital for near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) applications but are also crucial for realizing future error-correcting codes.
It has been shown that any generalized measurement can be decomposed into a sequence of weak measurements corresponding to a stochastic process. However, the weak measurements may require almost arbitrary unitaries, which are unlikely to be realized by any real measurement device. Furthermore, many measurement processes are destructive, like photon counting procedures that terminate once all photons are consumed. One cannot expect to have full control of the evolution of a state under such destructive measurements, and the possible unitaries allow only a limited set of weak measurements. In this paper, we consider a qubit model of destructive weak measurements, which is a toy version of an optical cavity, in which the state of an electromagnetic field mode inside the cavity leaks out and is measured destructively while the vacuum state $|0\ensuremath{\rangle}$ leaks into the cavity. At long times, the state of the qubit inevitably evolves to be $|0\ensuremath{\rangle}$, and the only available control is the choice of measurement on the external ancilla system. Surprisingly, this very limited model can still perform an arbitrary projective measurement on the qubit in any basis, where the probability of getting an outcome satisfies the usual Born rule. Combining this method with probabilistic postprocessing, the result can be extended to any generalized measurement with commuting positive-operator-valued measurement (POVM) elements. This implies, among other results, that any two-outcome POVM on a qubit can be decomposed into a sequence of destructive weak measurements by this restricted measurement device.