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arXiv:quant-ph/0401081 · Physical Review Letters

Three- and Four-Body Interactions in Spin-Based Quantum Computers

Ari Mizel, Daniel A. Lidar

Published Feb 20, 2004• 39 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In the effort to design and to construct a quantum computer, several leading proposals make use of spin-based qubits. These designs generally assume that spins undergo pairwise interactions. We point out that, when several spins are engaged mutually in pairwise interactions, the quantitative strengths of the interactions can change and qualitatively new terms can arise in the Hamiltonian, including four-body interactions. In parameter regimes of experimental interest, these coherent effects are large enough to interfere with computation and may require new error correction or avoidance techniques.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.92.077903

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In the effort to design and to construct a quantum computer, several leading proposals make use of spin-based qubits. These designs generally assume that spins undergo pairwise interactions. We point out that, when several spins are engaged mutually in pairwise interactions, the quantitative strengths of the interactions can change and qualitatively new terms can arise in the Hamiltonian, including four-body interactions. In parameter regimes of experimental interest, these coherent effects are large enough to interfere with computation and may require new error correction or avoidance techniques.
Electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots are promising candidates for the experimental realization of solid-state qubits. We analyse the dynamics of a system of three qubits arranged in a linear geometry and a system of four qubits arranged in a square geometry. Calculations are performed for several quantum dot confining potentials. In the three-qubit case, three-body effects are identified that have an important quantitative influence upon quantum computation. In the four-qubit case, the full Hamiltonian is found to include both three-body and four-body interactions that significantly influence the dynamics in physically relevant parameter regimes. We consider the implications of these results for the encoded universality paradigm applied to the four-electron qubit code; in particular, we consider what is required to circumvent the four-body effects in an encoded system (four spins per encoded qubit) by the appropriate tuning of experimental parameters.
This paper explores the limitations that interaction between the physical qubits making up a quantum computer may impose on the computer's performance. For computers using atoms as qubits, magnetic dipole-dipole interactions are likely to be dominant; various types of errors which they might introduce are considered here. The strength of the interaction may be reduce by increasing the distance between qubits, which in general will make the computer slower. For ion-chain based quantum computers the slowing down due to this effect is found to be generally more sever than that due to other causes. In particular, this effect alone would be enough to make these systems unacceptably slow for large-scale computation, whether they use the center of mass motion as the 'bus' or whether they do this via an optical cavity mode.
We present a Hamiltonian quantum-computation scheme universal for quantum computation. Our Hamiltonian is a sum of a polynomial number (in the number of gates LLL in the quantum circuit) of constant-norm, time-independent, two-body interaction terms. Furthermore, each qubit in the system interacts only with a constant number of other qubits in a three-layer, geometrically local layout. The computer runs in three steps---it starts in a simple initial product state, evolves according to a time-independent Hamiltonian for time of order L2{L}^{2}L2 (up to logarithmic factors), and finishes with a two-qubit measurement. Our model improves previous universal two-local-Hamiltonian constructions, as it avoids using perturbation gadgets and large energy-penalty terms in the Hamiltonian, which would result in a large required run time.
A quantum computer is similar to an ordinary computer, except that instead of bits it uses two-level quantum systems (qubits), and the usual logical operations on bits are replaced with noiseless quantum dynamics in the form of unitary gates or Hamiltonian interactions. Many sets of resources that are universal for quantum computation (that is, capable of implementing any quantum computation) have been found, but general conditions for universality are still only partially understood. Improving our understanding of these conditions contributes to two broad goals. On the one hand, understanding what class of physical systems is suitable for quantum computation allows us choose the systems that are most easily controlled or built in the laboratory. On the other hand, identifying the unifying characteristics of such a class provides insight into the fundamental physics responsible for the much greater computational power of quantum computers.        The original results presented in this thesis are a contribution to our understanding of the physical requirements for universal quantum computation. These results lead to the identification of a new, large class of universal dynamics. More specifically, the main problem that is addressed is the following: consider a physical system that is made up of a finite number of qubits that are subject to a natural, fixed interaction described by a two-body Hamiltonian. Suppose we have the ability to control the system only by applying fast one-qubit operations. Under what conditions is this system capable of universal quantum computation? The first original result of the thesis is to prove that universal quantum computation is possible under these conditions given the single extra constraint that the Hamiltonian must entangle, or connect, all of the qubits. In other words, since a two-body Hamiltonian is expressible as a sum of coupling terms each of which acts nontrivially on a pair of qubits, consider the graph whose vertices correspond to qubits and whose edges connect qubits that are coupled by a term in the Hamiltonian. Then this Hamiltonian, together with fast one-qubit unitaries, is universal for quantum computation precisely when the corresponding graph is connected.       This result suggests many potential generalizations, three of which are explored in this thesis. The first generalization is to show that the same result holds for a two-body Hamiltonian that acts on D-dimensional quantum systems (qudits), given fast one-qudit unitaries. A second extension is to the case of a many-body Hamiltonian, that is, a Hamiltonian that has coupling terms that act on more than two qubits. Again, we find that under mild restrictions, such Hamiltonians are universal provided they are connected and that arbitrary one-qubit unitaries are available. We also discover and explore some surprising structure in many-body Hamiltonians that is associated with the parity of the couplings. A third related problem that is addressed is the question of what two-qubit unitaries are universal for quantum computation. This problem was originally solved by J.-L. and R. Brylinski [BB02], who gave a technical proof of the universality of any two-qudit gate that is not the swap gate or a product of one-qudit unitaries, given one-qudit unitaries as a free resource. We develop an elementary and constructive proof for the case of qubits, and prove that our construction is very close to optimal in the number of uses of the two-qubit gate.       Given a qualitative understanding of what dynamical resources are universal for quantum computation, it is natural to consider developing a quantitative measure of the usefulness of quantum dynamics for quantum information processing. This is done in the final chapter of the thesis, in which the beginnings of a quantitative theory of quantum dynamics are developed.
The field of quantum information has matured and various protocols implementing a quantum computer are being pursued. Most similar to a classical computer is the circuit model. In 2007 Aharonov et al. showed the equivalence between the circuit model and a quantum annealer, and with this proofed the universality of quantum annealing. Here the system starts in an easily preparable ground state and evolves adiabatically to a final ground state which yields the solution of the computational problem. However, equivalence with the circuit model requires multi-local interactions, i.e. interaction terms involving more than two subsystems. Natural interactions are only two-local, hence the construction or simulation of higher order couplers is indispensable for a universal quantum annealer. Also, four-local couplers allow compact implementation of error correction with the Bacon-Shor code. Four-local interactions can further serve as a tool for basic research. Here we show that in a specific flux qubit coupler design without ancilla qubits, four body interactions are induced by virtual coupler excitations. For specific parameter regimes they are even the leading effect and can be tuned up to the GHz range.