Topics
The most frequent field-map topics among the PI' tracked papers.
Recent papers
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High-performance gates on trapped ion qubits using counterpropagating pulse-shaped laser beams
Abstract
Highly-localized light-matter interactions are necessary for scaling trapped-ion architectures. In hyperfine qubits, counterpropagating beams generate entangling gates by coupling with motion, but this effect is undesirable during single-qubit operations. For that reason, single-qubit gates are traditionally implemented with copropagating beams, and the coexistence of two beam geometries adds hardware and computational overhead. In an effort towards collective performance improvement with minimal overhead, we design and implement pulse-amplitude and dephasing robust dynamically corrected gates using Space Curve Quantum Control (SCQC) and compare them against the constant-amplitude gate implementation. We perform gate set tomography on a four-qubit trapped-ion register, and we discover more than 50% error reduction when robust pulses are used. We find that counterpropagating robust gates often outperform their copropagating counterparts and reach error rates as low as $(3.59 \pm 1.25)\cdot 10^{-3}$, using diamond distance as a metric. This value establishes a laser-driven-gate error reference and is merely an order of magnitude higher than the best reported $\textit{microwave}$ gate on a $\textit{single}$ ion. Additional experiments reveal that robust pulses can effectively suppress non-Markovian errors that grow during runtime. Our work challenges the widely accepted belief that copropagating gates should be preferred for their weak motional coupling and invites the adoption of high-performance robust pulses that suppress multiple noise sources of the trapped-ion error budget.
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How fast can a quantum gate be? Exact speed limits from geometry
Abstract
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.
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Theoretical Analysis and Simulations of Memory-based and All-photonic Quantum Repeaters and Networks
Abstract
Developing and deploying advanced Quantum Repeater (QR) technologies will be necessary to scale quantum networks to longer distances. Depending on the error mitigation mechanisms adopted to suppress loss and errors, QRs are typically classified into memory-based or all-photonic QRs; and each type of QR may be best suited for a specific type of underlying quantum technology, a particular scale of quantum networks, or a specific regime of operational parameters. We perform theoretical analysis and simulations of quantum repeaters and networks to investigate the relative performance and resource requirements of different quantum network paradigms. Our results will help guide the optimization of quantum hardware and components and shed light on the role of a robust control plane. We present our research findings on theoretical analysis and simulations of memory-based first-generation trapped-ion quantum repeaters and networks, and all-photonic entanglement-based quantum repeaters and networks. We study the relative performance in terms of entanglement generation rate and fidelity, as well as the resource requirements of these two different quantum network paradigms.
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Quantifying electron-nuclear spin entanglement dynamics in central-spin systems using one-tangles
Abstract
Optically-active solid-state systems such as self-assembled quantum dots, rare-earth ions, and color centers in diamond and SiC are promising candidates for quantum network, computing, and sensing applications. Although the nuclei in these systems naturally lead to electron spin decoherence, they can be repurposed, if they are controllable, as long-lived quantum memories. Prior work showed that a metric known as the one-tangling power can be used to quantify the entanglement dynamics of sparse systems of spin-1/2 nuclei coupled to color centers in diamond and SiC. Here, we generalize these findings to a wide range of electron-nuclear central-spin systems, including those with spin > 1/2 nuclei, such as in III-V quantum dots (QDs), rare-earth ions, and some color centers. Focusing on the example of an (In)GaAs QD, we offer a procedure for pinpointing physically realistic parameter regimes that yield maximal entanglement between the central electron and surrounding nuclei. We further harness knowledge of naturally-occurring degeneracies and the tunability of the system to generate maximal entanglement between target subsets of spins when the QD electron is subject to dynamical decoupling. We also leverage the one-tangling power as an exact and immediate method for computing QD electron spin dephasing times with and without the application of spin echo sequences, and use our analysis to identify coherence-sustaining conditions within the system.
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Implementing and benchmarking dynamically corrected gates on superconducting devices using space curve quantum control
Abstract
We use Space Curve Quantum Control (SCQC) to design, experimentally demonstrate, and benchmark dynamically corrected single-qubit gates on IBM hardware, comparing their performance to that of the standard gates provided by IBM. Our gates are designed to dynamically suppress both detuning and pulse-amplitude noise, with gate times as short as 88 ns. We compare our gates against those of IBM on two separate IBM devices and across sets of up to 18 qubits. Randomized benchmarking is done utilizing our detuning- and amplitude-robust gates in randomized Clifford circuits containing up to 4000 gates. Our gates achieve error-per-Clifford rates that reach as low as 7$\times10^{-5}$ ($\pm10^{-6}$) and which remain nearly constant as the compound noise is increased up to 4% amplitude noise and up to a detuning noise of 342 kHz; this is in contrast to the IBM gates, which exhibit rates that drop to order $10^{-3}$ across this range. This range is consistent with the commonly reported frequency fluctuations and with the upper bound of the statistical uncertainty in gate calibration. In addition, we investigate the performance across larger noise ranges of up to 20% amplitude and 3.5 MHz detuning noise using quantum process tomography. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate how SCQC can be tailored to different practical use cases by trading off amplitude-robustness for ultrafast 60 ns dephasing-only robust pulses. Our work establishes experimental guidelines for implementing SCQC-designed dynamically corrected gates on a broad range of qubit hardware to limit the effect of noise-induced errors and decoherence.
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An automated geometric space curve approach for designing dynamically corrected gates
Abstract
The noisy nature of quantum hardware necessitates the implementation of high-fidelity quantum gates in a noise-insensitive manner. While there exist many powerful methods for designing dynamically corrected gates, they typically involve an exploration across a large-dimensional landscape filled with solutions that are only locally optimal, making it challenging to find globally optimal ones. Moreover, these methods often use a single cost function to try to accomplish the two disparate goals of achieving a target gate and suppressing noise, and this can lead to unnecessary tradeoffs between the two and, consequently, lower fidelities. Here, we present a method for designing dynamically corrected gates called Bézier Ansatz for Robust Quantum (BARQ) control to address these challenges. Rather than numerically optimizing the controls directly, BARQ instead makes use of the Space Curve Quantum Control formalism in which the quantum evolution is mapped to a geometric space curve. In the formulation used by BARQ, the boundary conditions of the space curve determine the target gate, while its shape determines the noise robustness of the corresponding gate. This allows the target gate to be fixed upfront, so that numerical optimization is only needed to achieve noise-robustness, and this is performed efficiently using a control-point parameterization of the space curve. In this way, BARQ eliminates the gate-fixing and noise-robustness tradeoff while also providing a global perspective into the control landscape, and allows for ample freedom to design experimentally friendly and robust control pulses. The pulse design is facilitated through the developed software package qurveros.
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Parameterization and optimizability of pulse-level VQEs
Abstract
In conventional variational quantum eigensolvers (VQEs), trial states are prepared by applying series of parameterized gates to a reference state, with the gate parameters being varied to minimize the energy of the target system. Recognizing that the gates are intermediates which are ultimately compiled into a set of control pulses to be applied to each qubit in the lab, the recently proposed ctrl-VQE algorithm takes the amplitudes, frequencies, and phases of the pulse as the variational parameters used to minimize the molecular energy. In this work, we explore how all three degrees of freedom interrelate with one another. To this end, we consider several distinct strategies to parameterize the control pulses, assessing each one through numerical simulations of a transmon-like device. For each parameterization, we contrast the pulse duration required to prepare a good ansatz, and the difficulty to optimize that ansatz from a well-defined initial state. We deduce several guiding heuristics to implement practical ctrl-VQE in hardware, which we anticipate will generalize for generic device architectures.
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Generation of genuine all-way entanglement in defect-nuclear spin systems through dynamical decoupling sequences
Abstract
Multipartite entangled states are an essential resource for sensing, quantum error correction, and cryptography. Color centers in solids are one of the leading platforms for quantum networking due to the availability of a nuclear spin memory that can be entangled with the optically active electronic spin through dynamical decoupling sequences. Creating electron-nuclear entangled states in these systems is a difficult task as the always-on hyperfine interactions prohibit complete isolation of the target dynamics from the unwanted spin bath. While this emergent cross-talk can be alleviated by prolonging the entanglement generation, the gate durations quickly exceed coherence times. Here we show how to prepare high-quality GHZ$_M$-like states with minimal cross-talk. We introduce the $M$-tangling power of an evolution operator, which allows us to verify genuine all-way correlations. Using experimentally measured hyperfine parameters of an NV center spin in diamond coupled to carbon-13 lattice spins, we show how to use sequential or single-shot entangling operations to prepare GHZ$_M$-like states of up to $M=10$ qubits within time constraints that saturate bounds on $M$-way correlations. We study the entanglement of mixed electron-nuclear states and develop a non-unitary $M$-tangling power which additionally captures correlations arising from all unwanted nuclear spins. We further derive a non-unitary $M$-tangling power which incorporates the impact of electronic dephasing errors on the $M$-way correlations. Finally, we inspect the performance of our protocols in the presence of experimentally reported pulse errors, finding that XY decoupling sequences can lead to high-fidelity GHZ state preparation.
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Designing dynamically corrected gates robust to multiple noise sources using geometric space curves
Abstract
Noise-induced gate errors remain one of the main obstacles to realizing a broad range of quantum information technologies. Dynamical error suppression using carefully designed control schemes is critical for overcoming this challenge. Such schemes must be able to correct against multiple noise sources simultaneously afflicting a qubit in order to reach error correction thresholds. Here, we present a general framework for designing control fields that simultaneous suppress both noise in the fields themselves as well as transverse dephasing noise. Using the recently developed Space Curve Quantum Control formalism, in which robust quantum evolution is mapped to closed geometric curves in a multidimensional Euclidean space, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee the cancellation of both types of noise to leading order. We present several techniques for solving these conditions and provide explicit examples of error-resistant control fields. Our work also sheds light on the relation between holonomic evolution and the suppression of control field errors.
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Precise control of entanglement in multinuclear spin registers coupled to defects
Abstract
Quantum networks play an indispensable role in quantum information tasks such as secure communications, enhanced quantum sensing, and distributed computing. Among the most mature and promising platforms for quantum networking are nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond and other color centers in solids. One of the challenges in using these systems for networking applications is to controllably manipulate entanglement between the electron and the nuclear spin register despite the always-on nature of the hyperfine interactions, which makes this an inherently many-body quantum system. Here, we develop a general formalism to quantify and control the generation of entanglement in an arbitrarily large nuclear spin register coupled to a color center electronic spin. We provide a reliable measure of nuclear spin selectivity, by exactly incorporating into our treatment the dynamics with unwanted nuclei. We also show how to realize direct multipartite gates through the use of dynamical decoupling sequences, drastically reducing the total gate time compared to protocols based on sequential entanglement with individual nuclear spins. We quantify the performance of such gate operations in the presence of unwanted residual entanglement links, capturing the dynamics of the entire nuclear spin register. Finally, using experimental parameters of a well-characterized 27 nuclear spin register device, we show how to prepare with high fidelity entangled states for quantum error correction.