Dynamical decoupling in common environment

Abstract

Dynamical decoupling (DD) sequences were invented to eliminate the direct coupling between a qubit and its environment. We further investigate the possibility of decoupling the indirect qubit–qubit interaction induced by a common environment, and successfully find simplified solutions that preserve the bipartite quantum states to arbitrary order. Through analysing the exact dynamics of the controlled two-qubit density matrix, we have proven that applying independent Uhrig DD (UDD) on each qubit will effectively eliminate both the qubit–environment and indirect qubit–qubit couplings to the same order as in the single-qubit case, only if orders of the two UDD sequences have different parities. More specifically, UDD(n) on one qubit with UDD(m) on another are able to produce min (n, m)th-order suppression while n + m is odd. Our results can be used to reduce the pulse number in relevant experiments for protecting bipartite quantum states, or dynamically manipulating the indirect interaction within a certain quantum gate and quantum bus.