An exquisite control over the dynamics of a quantum system is essential for realizing any quantum technology. This thesis presents some practical and efficient strategies for coherent quantum control: a paradigm for controlling quantum dynamics using electromagnetic fields. Coherent control is a common framework for describing the physical implementation of quantum logic gates in several quantum information processing platforms including superconducting qubits and trapped ions. For the purpose of demonstration, however, liquid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is used in this thesis as it is an ideal test-bed for developing, testing and benchmarking coherent control tools and techniques. Coherent control was revitalised in 2005 by the development of Gradient Ascent Pulse Engineering (GRAPE), a powerful optimal control technique that is widely used for designing shaped pulses for a variety of tasks. GRAPE, like any other closed-loop optimal control algorithm, requires multiple evaluations of the computationally expensive matrix exponential and the full time-evolution propagator. To this end, I present strategies to sidestep the explicit evaluation of matrix exponentials, thereby offering substantial speed-ups over conventional implementations of the GRAPE algorithm. The results are demonstrated experimentally in NMR, but also in simulations of ultracold molecules and superconducting qubits. Beyond GRAPE, this thesis also considers methods for designing spin-echo sequences for implementing any arbitrary network of controlled-Z gates in a system of qubits with zz-couplings. First, a method based on linear-programming provides near time-optimal sequences in fully-coupled systems having up to a few hundred qubits. Further, an analytic method based on graph colouring finds near time-optimal spin echo sequences in engineered systems with any number of qubits having only nearest and next-nearest neighbour-couplings.
An exquisite control over the dynamics of a quantum system is essential for realizing any quantum technology. This thesis presents some practical and efficient strategies for coherent quantum control: a paradigm for controlling quantum dynamics using electromagnetic fields. Coherent control is a common framework for describing the physical implementation of quantum logic gates in several quantum information processing platforms including superconducting qubits and trapped ions. For the purpose of demonstration, however, liquid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is used in this thesis as it is an ideal test-bed for developing, testing and benchmarking coherent control tools and techniques. Coherent control was revitalised in 2005 by the development of Gradient Ascent Pulse Engineering (GRAPE), a powerful optimal control technique that is widely used for designing shaped pulses for a variety of tasks. GRAPE, like any other closed-loop optimal control algorithm, requires multiple evaluations of the computationally expensive matrix exponential and the full time-evolution propagator. To this end, I present strategies to sidestep the explicit evaluation of matrix exponentials, thereby offering substantial speed-ups over conventional implementations of the GRAPE algorithm. The results are demonstrated experimentally in NMR, but also in simulations of ultracold molecules and superconducting qubits. Beyond GRAPE, this thesis also considers methods for designing spin-echo sequences for implementing any arbitrary network of controlled-Z gates in a system of qubits with zz-couplings. First, a method based on linear-programming provides near time-optimal sequences in fully-coupled systems having up to a few hundred qubits. Further, an analytic method based on graph colouring finds near time-optimal spin echo sequences in engineered systems with any number of qubits having only nearest and next-nearest neighbour-couplings.
With the development of quantum information science, the active manipulation of quantum systems is becoming an important research frontier. To build realistic quantum information processors, one of the challenges is to implement arbitrary desired operations with high precision on quantum systems. A large number of quantum control methods and relevant numerical techniques have been put forward in recent years, such as quantum optimal control and quantum feedback control. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin systems offer an excellent testbed to develop benchmark tools and techniques for controlling quantum systems. In this review paper, we briefly introduce some of the basic control ideas developed for NMR systems in recent years. We first explain, for the liquid spin systems, the physics of various couplings and the causes of relaxation effects. These mechanisms govern the system dynamics, and thus are crucial for constructing rigorous and efficient control models. We also identify three types of available control means: 1) raido-frequency fields as coherent controls; 2) phase cycling, gradient fields and relaxation effects as non-unitary controls; 3) radiation damping effect as feedback control mechanism. Then, we elucidate some important control tasks, which may arise from the conventional NMR spectroscopy (e.g., pulse design and polarization transfer) or from quantum information science (e.g., algorithmic cooling and pseudo-pure state preparation). In the last part, we review some of the most important control methods that are applicable to NMR control tasks. For systems with a relatively small number of spins, it is possible to use analytic optimal control theory to realize the target unitary operations. However, for larger systems, numerical methods are necessary. The gradient ascent pulse engineering algorithm and pulse compiler techniques are the most successful techniques for implementing complicated quantum networks currently. There are some interesting topics of utilizing radiation damping and relaxation effects to achieve more powerful controls. Finally, we give an outline of the possible future work.
This thesis is concerned with the control of quantum systems.Given a Hamiltonian model of a quantum system, we are interested in finding controls-typically shaped electromagnetic pulses-that steer the evolution of the system toward a desired target operation.For this we employ a numerical optimisation method known as the GRAPE algorithm.For particular experimental systems, we design control schemes that respect constraints of robustness and addressability, and are within the reach of the experimental hardware.A general procedure is given for specifying a Hamiltonian model of a driven N -level system and converting it to an appropriate rotating frame.This is then applied together with the numerical algorithm to design improved schemes for two different systems, where laser fields manipulate orbital and hyperfine states of Pr 3+ and Rb.The generation of cluster states in Ising-coupled systems is also studied.We find that, in the ideal case, the solution of evolving only under the coupling Hamiltonian is not time-optimal.This surprising result is in contrast to the known cases for unitary gates.For a symmetrised three-qubit example, we provide a geometrical interpretation of this.Numerically optimised control schemes are then developed for a nonideal coupling topology, modelling an experimental configuration of trapped ions.Controls for the implementation of the two-qubit Deutsch and Grover algorithms are designed for a pair of 13 C nuclear spins at a nitrogen vacancy center in diamond.These implementations are robust to experimental errors, and found to be reproduced with high accuracy on a VFG-150 pulse generator.We also consider two-qubit gate synthesis in a system of superconducting qubits coupled by mii xii CONTENTS C.4 Examples of time-optimal gates . . . . . . . .
Over the last few years, the GRAPE algorithm has become of central importance in the development of general purpose control sequences for several branches of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. In this thesis, the application of the GRAPE algorithm to quantum information processing tasks is considered. First the theory underlying the algorithm is reviewed in detail, then a number of extensions and improvements to the core technique are developed. An implementation of the GRAPE algorithm using GPUs is presented and compared with a standard CPU based implementation. A variety of experimental results are presented covering many different aspects of the practical use of GRAPE. This includes an evaluation of some of the errors that can affect the performance of GRAPE sequences in real experiments, and their relative importance. The strengths and weaknesses of GRAPE compared to the other possible techniques are assessed, and some suggestions made regarding potential developments in this direction. Pseudo-pure states are a crucial component of any NMR based quantum computer, but many current methods for preparing them sacrifice purity in exchange for simplicity in the preparation sequence. This thesis also presents a new method for robustly generating pseudo-pure states with the maximum possible purity.
Fifty years of developments in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have resulted in an unrivaled degree of control of the dynamics of coupled two-level quantum systems. This coherent control of nuclear spin dynamics has recently been taken to a new level, motivated by the interest in quantum information processing. NMR has been the workhorse for the experimental implementation of quantum protocols, allowing exquisite control of systems up to seven qubits in size. This article surveys and summarizes a broad variety of pulse control and tomographic techniques which have been developed for, and used in, NMR quantum computation. Many of these will be useful in other quantum systems now being considered for the implementation of quantum information processing tasks.
Quantum computing and quantum information science are two recently discovered and rapidly growing fields of physics that show substantial promise in providing new and valuable technologies in the foreseeable future. Large-scale quantum computers, if ever realized experimentally, are likely to outperform their classical counterparts in a number of important computational tasks, the most important of which may be the accurate simulation of many-body quantum systems such as the ones encountered in physics, chemistry and life sciences. This thesis investigates the problem of controlling quantum systems for the purpose of performing quantum information processing tasks. The problem is approached from a theoretical and simulational viewpoint. The work contained here encompasses a range of levels of abstraction. Firstly, we discuss the decomposition of abstract multiqubit logic gates into sequences of simple elementary gates. Secondly, we study the local commutational properties of two-qubit gates using local gate invariants. Thirdly, we develop methods for the physical implementation of the elementary gates through the control of specific quantum systems, possibly in the presence of noise and decoherence. We present a new, almost optimal n-qubit gate decomposition based on the cosine-sine decomposition, which utilizes a likewise new intermediate quantum circuit structure we call a uniformly controlled gate. We then show how they can be used in constructing a general state transformation circuit. Both of the resulting circuits can be efficiently implemented using nearest-neighbor gates which makes their physical realization simpler. A local gate invariant is introduced which can be used to assess the suitability of two-qubit gates for serving as the entangling gate in elementary gate libraries. Finally, we develop numerical optimization methods for finding near-optimal control sequences for generating oneand two-qubit gates, both in closed quantum systems and in the presence of Markovian noise.
Quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is a quantum analogue of the classical discrete Fourier transform. It is a fundamental quantum gate in quantum algorithms which has an exponential advantage over the classical computation and has been excessively studied. Normally, an n-qubit quantum Fourier transform could be resolved into the tensor product of n single-qubit operations, and each operation could be implemented by a Hadamard gate and a controlled phase gate. Then the complexity of an n-qubit QFT is of order O(n2). To reduce the complexity of quantum operations, optimal control (OC) method has recently been used successfully to find the minimum time for implementing a quantum operation. Up to now, two types of quantum optimal control methods have been presented, i.e. analytical and numerical methods. The analytical approach is to change the problem of efficient synthesis of unitary transformations into the geometrical one of finding the shortest paths. Numerical optimal control procedures are based on the gradient methods (GRAPE, Gradient Ascent Pulse Engineering) and Krotov methods. Notable application mainly focus on nuclear magnetic resonance fields, including imaging, liquid-state NMR, solid-state NMR, and NMR quantum computation. One obvious advantage of optimal control NMR quantum computation is that the OC unitary evolution transformation pulse sequences are normally shorter than the conventional corresponding ones. Here we use the optimal control method to find the minimum duration for implementing QFT quantum gate. A linear spin chain with nearest-neighbor Ising interaction is used to find the optimization. And the optimized pulse sequence is experimentally demonstrated on an NMR quantum information processor. By using optimal control method with numerical calculation, a three-qubit QFT in an indirect-linear-coupling chain system is optimized. The duration of the OC QFT is obviously shorter than that of conventional approaches. The OC pulse sequence has been experimentally implemented on a liquid-state NMR spectrometer. To verify the optimally controlled pulse sequence for the three-qubit QFT, different initial states are assumed. The accuracy of the OC pulse sequence could be demonstrated by the consistency of theoretical simulation spectra with the experimental results. The good consistency between the simulation and the experimental spectra demonstrates that the OC QFT is of high fidelity.