Quantum logic gates for coupled superconducting phase qubits.

Unlike classical digital computers in which a bit can represent either 1 or 0 at any time, quantum computers use a two-level system, i.e., a qubit, to implement logical operations based on quantum mechanical laws, which can represent both values at once. Owing to the superposition property of qubits, quantum computers have natural parallel processing advantages and thus have potential to exceed the computational efficiency of classical computers for particular tasks. Quantum logic gates are the generalization of classical logic gates in computational networks. It has been proved that two-qubit quantum gates together with one-qubit quantum gates are adequate for constructing networks with any possible quantum computational property. Directional couplers are the most critical elementsfor constructing the quantum gates. In recent years, photonic quantum technologies have emerged as a promising experimental platform for quantum computing. Single photons have robust noise resistance, long coherence time, high transmission speed and great compatibility with other systems. They can be easily manipulated and encoded in any of several degrees of freedom, for example, polarization, path, spatial mode or time bin. Optical waveguide technology enables the realizing of complex optical schemes comprised of many elements with desired scalability, stability and miniaturization. Femtosecond laser direct writing of waveguide has been adopted as a powerful tool for integrated quantum photonics with characteristics of rapidness, cost-effectiveness, mask-less and single-step process. In particular, it has the ability to build arbitrary three-dimensional circuits directly inside bulk materials, which is impossible to achieve with conventional lithography. In this article we review the femtosecond laser writing and quantum characterization of directional coupler and important one-qubit and two-qubit optical quantum logic gates, such as Hadamard gate, Pauli-X gate, controlled-NOT gate, and controlled-Phase gate. The qubits in these gates are usually encoded through optical paths or polarizations of photons. The key to the realization of polarization-encoded one-qubit gates is to achieve flexible wave-plate operations, which is described in detail. Controlled-NOT gate and controlled-phase gate are the most crucial two-qubit gates in the linear optics computation and sometimes they can be converted into each other by adding some one-qubit gates or special superposition states. Many different kinds of waveguide circuits have been used to implement these two-qubit gates. The outlook and challenges for the femtosecond laser writing of three-qubit gates, such as Toffoli gate and Fredkin gate, are briefly introduced.

We propose a two-qubit quantum logic gate between a superconducting atom and a propagating microwave photon. The atomic qubit is encoded on its lowest two levels and the photonic qubit is encoded on its carrier frequencies. The gate operation completes deterministically upon reflection of a photon, and various two-qubit gates (SWAP, $\sqrt{\rm SWAP}$, and Identity) are realized through {\it in situ} control of the drive field. The proposed gate is applicable to construction of a network of superconducting atoms, which enables gate operations between non-neighboring atoms.

High-fidelity single- and multiqubit operations compose the backbone of quantum information processing. This fidelity is based on the ability to couple single- or two-qubit levels in an extremely coherent and precise manner. A necessary condition for coherent quantum evolution is a highly stable local oscillator driving these transitions. Here we study the effect of fast noise, that is, noise at frequencies much higher than the local oscillator linewidth, on the fidelity of one- and two-qubit gates in a trapped-ion system. We analyze and measure the effect of fast noise on single-qubit operations, including resonant $\ensuremath{\pi}$ rotations and off-resonant sideband transitions. We further numerically analyze the effect of fast phase noise on the M\o{}lmer-S\o{}rensen two-qubit gate. We find a unified and simple way to estimate the performance of all of these operations through a single parameter given by the noise power spectral density at the qubit response frequency. While our analysis focuses on phase noise and on trapped-ion systems, it is relevant for other sources of fast noise as well as for other qubit systems in which spinlike qubits are coupled by a common bosonic field. Our analysis can help in guiding the design of quantum hardware platforms and gates, improving their fidelity towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Course 9 Solid state quantum bit circuits

We present an inertial protocol for STIRAP-based single- and two-qubit quantum logic gates. Our protocol achieves an order-of-magnitude lower infidelity compared to existing protocols. A similar approach can be used to improve any adiabatic protocol.

Rapid progress in semiconductor spin qubits has enabled experimental demonstrations of a two-qubit logic gate. Understanding spin decoherence in a two-qubit logic gate is necessary for optimal qubit operation. We study spin decoherence due to 1/f charge noise for two electrons in a double quantum dot used for a two-qubit controlled-phase gate. In contrast to the usual belief, spin decoherence can be dominated by the tunneling noise from 1/f charge noise instead of the detuning noise. Tunneling noise can dominate because the effect of tunneling noise on the spin qubit is first order in the charge admixture; while the effect of the detuning noise is only second order. The different orders of contributions result in different detuning dependence of the decoherence, which provides a way to identify the noise source. We find that decoherence in a recent two-qubit experiment was dominated by the tunneling noise from 1/f charge noise. The results illustrate the importance of considering tunneling noise to design optimal operation of spin qubits.

In NMR quantum computing, spin states of spin-1/2 nuclei are called qubits. Quantum logic gates are represented by unitary matrices. As a universal gate, controlled-NOT (CNOT) is a two-qubit gate. For the IS (I = 1/2 and S = 1/2) spin system, two-qubit CNOT gate is represented by a 4 × 4 matrix. SWAP logic gate, which exchanges two quantum states, is constructed by CNOT gates. In this study, first, four-qubit CNOT gates are constructed for the IS (I = 3/2, S = 3/2) spin system. Then, by using these CNOT gates, a four-qubit SWAP logic gate is found. As an application and verification, an obtained SWAP logic gate is applied to the matrix representation of product operators for the IS (I = 3/2, S = 3/2) spin system. SWAP logic gate can also be presented by an NMR pulse sequence. By using the product operator theory, the pulse sequence of the SWAP logic gate is applied to product operators of the IS (I = 3/2, S = 3/2) spin system. The expected exchange results are obtained for both the matrix representation and the pulse sequence of SWAP logic gate.

Non-adiabatic holonomic quantum gate in decoherence-free subspaces is of greatly practical importance due to its built-in fault tolerance, coherence stabilization virtues, and short run-time. Here, we propose some compact schemes to implement two- and three-qubit controlled unitary quantum gates and Fredkin gate. For the controlled unitary quantum gates, the unitary operator acting on the target qubit is an arbitrary single-qubit gate operation. The controlled quantum gates can be directly implemented by utilizing non-adiabatic holonomy in decoherence-free subspaces and the required resource for the decoherence-free subspace encoding is minimal by using only two neighboring physical qubits undergoing collective dephasing to encode a logical qubit.

We propose an efficient approach to prepare Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs in currently existing Josephson nanocircuits with capacitive couplings. In these fixed coupling circuits, two-qubit logic gates could be easily implemented while, strictly speaking, single-qubit gates cannot be easily realized. For a known two-qubit state, conditional single-qubit operation could still be designed to evolve only the selected qubit and keep the other qubit unchanged; the rotation of the selected qubit depends on the state of the other one. These conditional single-qubit operations allow us to deterministically generate the well-known Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs, represented by EPR-Bell (or Bell) states. Quantum-state tomography is further proposed to experimentally confirm the generation of these states. The decays of the prepared EPR pairs are analyzed using numerical simulations. Possible application of the generated EPR pairs to test Bell's Inequality is also discussed.

We propose a nonadiabatic non-Abelian geometric quantum operation scheme to realize universal quantum computation with mesoscopic Rydberg atoms. A single control atom entangles a mesoscopic ensemble of target atoms through long-range interactions between Rydberg states. We demonstrate theoretically that both the single qubit and two-qubit quantum gates can achieve high fidelities around or above 99.9% in ideal situations. Besides, to address the experimental issue of Rabi frequency fluctuation (Rabi error) in Rydberg atom and ensemble, we apply the dynamical-invariant-based zero systematic-error sensitivity (ZSS) optimal control theory to the proposed scheme. Our numerical simulations show that the average fidelity could be 99.98% for single ensemble qubit gate and 99.94% for two-qubit gate even when the Rabi frequency of the gate laser acquires 10% fluctuations. We also find that the optimized scheme can also reduce errors caused by higher-order perturbation terms in deriving the Hamiltonian of the ensemble atoms. To address the experimental issue of decoherence error between the ground state and Rydberg levels in Rydberg ensemble, we introduce a dispersive coupling regime between Rydberg and ground levels, based on which the Rydberg state is adiabatically discarded. The numerical simulation demonstrate that the quantum gate is enhanced. By combining strong Rydberg atom interactions, nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation, dynamical invariant and optimal control theory together, our scheme shows a new route to construct fast and robust quantum gates with mesoscopic atomic ensembles. Our study contributes to the ongoing effort in developing quantum information processing with Rydberg atoms trapped in optical lattices or tweezer arrays.

We analyze the operation of a novel sensor based on atom interferometry, which can achieve supra-classical sensitivity by exploiting quantum correlations in mixed states of many qubits. The interferometer is based on quantum gates which use coherently-controlled Rydberg interactions between a single atom (which acts as a control qubit) and an atomic ensemble (which provides register qubits). In principle, our scheme can achieve precision scaling with the size of the ensemble - which can extend to large numbers of atoms - while using only single-qubit operations on the control and bulk operations on the ensemble. We investigate realistic implementation of the interferometer, and our main aim is to develop a new approach to quantum metrology that can achieve quantum-enhanced measurement precision by exploiting coherent operations on large impure quantum states. We propose an experiment to demonstrate the enhanced sensitivity of the protocol, and to investigate a transition from classical to supra-classical sensitivity which occurs when using highly-mixed probe states.

We propose a scheme for implementing single-qubit and nontrivial two-qubit gate operations in a system with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) via Raman transitions in circuit QED. The gate operations only involve the two lower flux states of the SQUID, and hence the effect of the excited state can be neglected. By encoding quantum information into the decoherence free subspace of the SQUID system, the evolution of the system results in fault-tolerant quantum gates. The effect of decoherence caused by the decay of the transmission line resonator is investigated.

Recent progress in atomistic modelling and simulations of donor spin qubits in silicon

A number of quantum algorithms have been performed on small quantum computers; these include Shor's prime factorization algorithm, error correction, Grover's search algorithm and a number of analog and digital quantum simulations. Because of the number of gates and qubits necessary, however, digital quantum particle simulations remain untested. A contributing factor to the system size required is the number of ancillary qubits needed to implement matrix exponentials of the potential operator. Here, we show that a set of tunneling problems may be investigated with no ancillary qubits and a cost of one single-qubit operator per time step for the potential evolution, eliminating at least half of the quantum gates required for the algorithm and more than that in the general case. Such simulations are within reach of current quantum computer architectures.

We present an experimental implementation of a two-qubit photonic quantum processor fabricated using femtosecond laser writing technology. We employ femtosecond laser writing to create a low-loss reconfigurable photonic chip, implementing precise single-qubit and two-qubit operations. We present a careful characterization of the performance of single- and two-qubit gates. An exemplary application of estimating the ground state energy of an H2 molecule using the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm is demonstrated. Our results highlight the potential of the femtosecond laser writing technology to deliver high quality small-scale quantum photonic processors.