Protecting Quantum States Research Articles

Multi-field-driven optomechanical entanglement.

Cavity optomechanical (COM) entanglement, playing an essential role in building quantum networks and enhancing quantum sensors, is usually weak and easily destroyed by noises. As feasible and effective ways to overcome this obstacle, optical or mechanical parametric modulations have been used to improve the quality of quantum squeezing or entanglement in various COM systems. However, the possibility of combining these powerful means to enhance COM entanglement has yet to be explored. Here, we fill this gap by studying a COM system containing an intra-cavity optical parametric amplifier (OPA), driven optically and mechanically. By tuning the relative strength and the frequency mismatch of optical and mechanical driving fields, we find that constructive interference can emerge and significantly improve the strength of COM entanglement and its robustness to thermal noises. This work sheds what we believe to be a new light on preparing and protecting quantum states with multi-field driven COM systems for diverse applications.

Tuning Multiple Landau Quantization in Transition-Metal Dichalcogenide with Strain.

Landau quantization associated with the quantized cyclotron motion of electrons under magnetic field provides the effective way to investigate topologically protected quantum states with entangled degrees of freedom and multiple quantum numbers. Here we report the cascade of Landau quantization in a strained type-II Dirac semimetal NiTe2 with spectroscopic-imaging scanning tunneling microscopy. The uniform-height surfaces exhibit single-sequence Landau levels (LLs) at a magnetic field originating from the quantization of topological surface state (TSS) across the Fermi level. Strikingly, we reveal the multiple sequence of LLs in the strained surface regions where the rotation symmetry is broken. First-principles calculations demonstrate that the multiple LLs attest to the remarkable lifting of the valley degeneracy of TSS by the in-plane uniaxial or shear strains. Our findings pave a pathway to tune multiple degrees of freedom and quantum numbers of TMDs via strain engineering for practical applications such as high-frequency rectifiers, Josephson diode and valleytronics.

Direct Observation of Dynamically Localized Quantum Optical States.

Quantum-correlated biphoton states play an important role in quantum communication and processing, especially considering the recent advances in integrated photonics. However, it remains a challenge to flexibly transport quantum states on a chip, when dealing with large-scale sophisticated photonic designs. The equivalence between certain aspects of quantum optics and solid-state physics makes it possible to utilize a range of powerful approaches in photonics, including topologically protected boundary states, graphene edge states, and dynamic localization. Optical dynamic localization allows efficient protection of classical signals in photonic systems by implementing an analogue of an external alternating electric field. Here, we report on the observation of dynamic localization for quantum-correlated biphotons, including both the generation and the propagation aspects. As a platform, we use sinusoidal waveguide arrays with cubic nonlinearity. We record biphoton coincidence count rates as evidence of robust generation of biphotons and demonstrate the dynamic localization features in both spatial and temporal space by analyzing the quantum correlation of biphotons at the output of the waveguide array. Experimental results demonstrate that various dynamic modulation parameters are effective in protecting quantum states without introducing complex topologies. Our Letter opens new avenues for studying complex physical processes using photonic chips and provides an alternative mechanism of protecting communication channels and nonclassical quantum sources in large-scale integrated quantum optics.

0−π qubit with one Josephson junction

Quantum states are usually fragile which makes quantum computation being not as stable as classical computation. Quantum correction codes can protect quantum states but need a large number of physical qubits to code a single logic qubit. Alternatively, the protection at the hardware level has been recently developed to maintain the coherence of the quantum information by using symmetries. However, it generally has to pay the expense of increasing the complexity of the quantum devices. In this work, we show that the protection at the hardware level can be approached without increasing the complexity of the devices. The interplay between the spin-orbit coupling and the Zeeman splitting in the semiconductor allows us to tune the Josephson coupling in terms of the spin degree of freedom of Cooper pairs, the hallmark of the superconducting spintronics. This leads to the implementation of the parity-protected 0-$\pi$ superconducting qubit with only one highly transparent superconductor-semiconductor Josephson junction, which makes our proposal immune from the various fabrication imperfections.

Decoherence suppression for <i>N</i>-qubit states via weak measurement and environment-assisted measurement

All open quantum systems are affected by environmental noises due to their interactions with the external environment and inevitably suffer from decoherence. Hence, it is fundamentally important and necessary to investigate decoherence suppression for open quantum systems via proper control strategies. Inspired by feed-forward control in the classical control theory, this paper proposes a novel decoherence suppression scheme via weak measurement and environment-assisted measurement. We first take the single-qubit system as an example to illustrate steps of the proposed scheme. To be specific, the single-qubit system is transferred to a state that is more robust to environmental noises via pre-weak measurement operators and feed-forward control operators before the decoherence channel, a measurement is performed on the environment coupled to the protected qubit during the decoherence channel, and the initial state is recovered via reversed feed-forward control operators and post-weak measurement operators after the decoherence channel. The optimum post-weak measurement strength is derived by setting the normalized final state equal to the initial state. By considering the optimum post-weak measurement strength, analytical formulas of the total success probability and the total fidelity are deduced. The proposed scheme is applicable for protecting quantum states from arbitrary decoherence channels with at least one invertible Kraus operator although only the amplitude damping channel and the phase damping channel are taken into account. Provided that the decay rate of the amplitude or phase damping channel is completely known, one can always achieve unit fidelity even for heavy damping cases, which is the biggest advantage of the proposed scheme. Influences of several parameters including strengths of weak measurements, the initial state and the decay rate of the decoherence channel on the performance of decoherence suppression are analyzed, and detailed procedures of a single-qubit pure and mixed state protection are presented on the Bloch sphere, respectively. Subsequently, the Kronecker product is employed to construct operators of dimension <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ 2^N \times 2^N$\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="22-20220760_M1.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="22-20220760_M1.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, the proposed scheme is extended to the general <i>N</i>-qubit case, and unified analytical formulas of the total success probability and the total fidelity are deduced. By applying the proposed scheme to the protection of two-qubit entangled states, it is demonstrated that post-weak measurement operators are not necessary sometimes because of the particular structure of two-qubit entangled states. Furthermore, two numerical simulations are designed to enhance the concurrence of two-qubit entangled states and improve the average fidelity of the standard quantum teleportation in a noisy environment. Analytical formulas of the improvement of concurrence and the average teleportation fidelity are deduced, and the superiority of the proposed scheme is highlighted in comparison with unprotected scenarios.

Symmetry-Induced Error Filtering in a Photonic Lieb Lattice.

Quantum computation promises intrinsically parallel information processing capacity by harnessing the superposition and entanglement of quantum states. However, it is still challenging to realize universal quantum computation due that the reliability and scalability are limited by unavoidable noises on qubits. Nontrivial topological properties like quantum Hall phases are found capable of offering protection, but require stringent conditions of topological band gaps and broken time-reversal symmetry. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a symmetry-induced error filtering scheme, showing a more general role of geometry in protection mechanism and applications. We encode qubits in a superposition of two spatial modes on a photonic Lieb lattice. The geometric symmetry endows the system with topological properties featuring a flat band touching, leading to distinctive transmission behaviors of π-phase qubits and 0-phase qubits. The geometry exhibits a significant effect on filtering phase errors, which also enables it to monitor phase deviations in real time. The symmetry-induced error filtering can be a key element for encoding and protecting quantum states, suggesting an emerging field of symmetry-protected universal quantum computation and noisy intermediate-scale quantum technologies.

Better quantum control does not imply better discrimination effect

Quantum feedback control (QFBC) and quantum feedforward control (QFFC) are two major techniques for protecting quantum states against decoherence. Based on this, Guo et al. proposed a scheme by combining the QFFC and the minimum-error discrimination (MED) to realize a better effect of discriminating two non-orthogonal states after passing a noisy channel (Phys Rev A 91:022321, 2015) than the scheme without the QFFC. Recently, Cao et al. proposed a novel composite control scheme for protecting such states (Phys Rev A 95:032313, 2017), where QFBC and QFFC are combined. They showed that the performance of the composite control scheme is better than that of the previous control schemes in terms of the success probability and the fidelity. In this paper, we examine the discrimination scheme by combining the composite control and the MED and observe an interesting phenomenon, i.e., better quantum control does not imply better discrimination effect. Finally, we explain this phenomenon.

Continuous dynamical decoupling and decoherence-free subspaces for qubits with tunable interaction

Protecting quantum states from the decohering effects of the environment is of great importance for the development of quantum computation devices and quantum simulators. Here, we introduce a continuous dynamical decoupling protocol that enables us to protect the entangling gate operation between two qubits from the environmental noise. We present a simple model that involves two qubits which interact with each other with a strength that depends on their mutual distance and generates the entanglement among them, as well as in contact with an environment. The nature of the environment, that is, whether it acts as an individual or common bath to the qubits, is also controlled by the effective distance of qubits. Our results indicate that the introduced continuous dynamical decoupling scheme works well in protecting the entangling operation. Furthermore, under certain circumstances, the dynamics of the qubits naturally led them into a decoherence-free subspace which can be used complimentary to the continuous dynamical decoupling.

Chiral spin currents in a trapped-ion quantum simulator using Floquet engineering

The most typical ingredient of topologically protected quantum states are magnetic fluxes. In a system of spins, complex-valued interaction parameters give rise to a flux, if their phases do not add up to zero along a closed loop. Here we apply periodic driving, a powerful tool for quantum engineering, to a trapped-ion quantum simulator in order to generate such spin-spin interactions. We consider a simple driving scheme, consisting of a repeated series of locally quenched fields, and demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by studying the dynamics of a small system. An emblematic hallmark of the flux, accessible in experiments, is the appearance of chiral spin currents. Strikingly, we find that in parameter regimes where, in the absence of fluxes, phonon excitations dramatically reduce the fidelity of the spin model simulation, the spin dynamics remains widely unaffected by the phonons when fluxes are present.

Freezing quantum coherence with weak measurement

We show how to optimally protect quantum states and freeze coherence under incoherent channels using a quantum weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal. In particular, we present explicit formulas for the conditions for freezing quantum coherence in a given quantum state.

Protection of quantum Fisher information in entangled states via classical driving

Quantum entanglement can offer a quadratic enhancement in the precision of parameter estimation. We here study the protection of quantum Fisher information (QFI) of the phase parameter in entangled-atom states within the framework of independently dissipative environments and driven individually by classical fields. It is shown that the QFI of the phase parameter can be protected effectively only when the classical fields that drive all atoms are suitably strong, and if one of them vanishes or is very weak, then the ability of protection loses, no matter how strong the other driving fields are. We also study the evolution of fidelity of the entangled state itself and find that though the protections of QFI and quantum states are two different notions, the method can also be used to protect quantum states effectively when the driving fields are suitably strong.

Feed-forward control for quantum state protection against decoherence

We propose a novel scheme of feed-forward control and its reversal for protecting quantum state against decoherence. Before the noise channel our pre-weak measurement and feed-forward are just to change the protected state into the state almost immune to the noise channel, and after the channel our reversed operations and post-weak measurements are just to restore the protected state. Unlike most previous state protection schemes, ours only concerns the noise channel and does not care about the protected state. We show that our scheme can effectively protect unknown states, nonorthogonal states and entangled states against amplitude damping noise. Our scheme has dramatic merits of protecting quantum states against heavy amplitude damping noise, and can perfectly protect some specific nonorthogonal states in an almost deterministic way, which might be found some applications in current quantum communication technology. And it is most important that our scheme is experimentally available with current technology.

Protecting quantum states from decoherence of finite temperature using weak measurement

Exposed in the nonzero temperature environment, a quantum system can both lose and gain excitations by interacting with the environment. In this work, we show how to optimally protect quantum states and quantum entanglement in such a situation based on measurement reversal from weak measurement. In particular, we present explicit formulas of protection. We find that this scheme can circumvent the entanglement sudden death in certain conditions.

Quantum state protection by successive translation

We show a method to protect quantum states from the disturbance due to the random potential by successive rapid manipulations of the quantum states. The quantum states are kept undisturbed for a longer time than the case of the simple trapping with a stationary potential. The effective potential, which the quantum states feel, becomes uniform when the velocity of the transport is sufficiently large. It is also shown that the alternating transport of a Bose-Einstein condensate with the driving potential derived by fast-forward scaling theory [Masuda and Nakamura, Proc. R. Soc. A 466, 1135 (2010)] can protect it from the disturbance.

SimulatingZ2topological insulators with cold atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice

We propose an experimental scheme to simulate and detect the properties of time-reversal invariant topological insulators, using cold atoms trapped in one-dimensional bichromatic optical lattices. This system is described by a one-dimensional Aubry-Andre model with an additional SU(2) gauge structure, which captures the essential properties of a two-dimensional Z2 topological insulator. We demonstrate that topologically protected edge states, with opposite spin orientations, can be pumped across the lattice by sweeping a laser phase adiabatically. This process constitutes an elegant way to transfer topologically protected quantum states in a highly controllable environment. We discuss how density measurements could provide clear signatures of the topological phases emanating from our one-dimensional system.

Switching off the reservoir through nonstationary quantum systems

In this paper, we demonstrate that the inevitable action of the environment can be substantially weakened when considering appropriate nonstationary quantum systems. Beyond protecting quantum states against decoherence, an oscillating frequency can be engineered to make the system–reservoir coupling almost negligible. Differently from the program for engineering reservoir and similarly to the schemes for dynamical decoupling of open quantum systems, our technique does not require previous knowledge of the state to be protected. However, differently from the previously-reported schemes for dynamical decoupling, our technique does not rely on the availability of tailored external pulses acting faster than the shortest timescale accessible to the reservoir degree of freedom.

Toy Model for a Relational Formulation of Quantum Theory

In the absence of an external frame of reference physical degrees of freedom must describe relations between systems. Using a simple model, we investigate how such a relational quantum theory naturally arises by promoting reference systems to the status of dynamical entities. Our goal is to demonstrate using elementary quantum theory how any quantum mechanical experiment admits a purely relational description at a fundamental level, from which the original "non-relational" theory emerges in a semi-classical limit. According to this thesis, the non-relational theory is therefore an approximation of the fundamental relational theory. We propose four simple rules that can be used to translate an "orthodox" quantum mechanical description into a relational description, independent of an external spacial reference frame or clock. The techniques used to construct these relational theories are motivated by a Bayesian approach to quantum mechanics, and rely on the noiseless subsystem method of quantum information science used to protect quantum states against undesired noise. The relational theory naturally predicts a fundamental decoherence mechanism, so an arrow of time emerges from a time-symmetric theory. Moreover, there is no need for a "collapse of the wave packet" in our model: the probability interpretation is only applied to diagonal density operators. Finally, the physical states of the relational theory can be described in terms of "spin networks" introduced by Penrose as a combinatorial description of geometry, and widely studied in the loop formulation of quantum gravity. Thus, our simple bottom-up approach (starting from the semi-classical limit to derive the fully relational quantum theory) may offer interesting insights on the low energy limit of quantum gravity.

Parametrization of the feedback Hamiltonian realizing a pure steady state

Feedback control is expected to considerably protect quantum states against decoherence caused by interaction between the system and environment. Especially, Markovian feedback scheme developed by Wiseman can modify the properties of decoherence and eventually recover the purity of the steady state of the corresponding master equation. This paper provides a condition for which the modified master equation has a pure steady state. By applying this condition to a two-qubit system, we obtain a complete parametrization of the feedback Hamiltonian such that the steady state becomes a maximally entangled state.

Topologically protected quantum states and quantum computing in Josephson junctions arrays

We review recent results on a new class of Josephson arrays which have nontrivial topology and exhibit novel quantum states at low temperatures. One of these states is characterized by long-range order in a two-Cooper-pair condensate and by a discrete topological order parameter. The second state is insulating and can be considered as being the result of an evolution of the former state due to Bose-condensation of usual superconductive vortices with a flux quantum Φ0. The quantum phase transition between these two states is controlled by variation of the external magnetic field. Both the superconductive and insulating states are characterized by the presence of 2K-degenerate ground states, with K being the number of topologically different cycles existing in the plane of the array. This degeneracy is “protected” from the external perturbations (and noise) by the topological order parameter and spectral gap. We show that under ideal conditions the low-order effect of the external perturbations on this degeneracy is exactly zero and that deviations from ideality lead to only exponentially small effects of perturbations. We argue that this system provides a physical implementation of an ideal quantum computer with a built-in error correction. A number of relatively simple “echo-like” experiments possible on small-size arrays are discussed.

Quantum information is physical

We discuss a few current developments in the use of quantum mechanically coherent systems for information processing. In each of these developments, Rolf Landauer has played a crucial role in nudging us, and other workers in the field, into asking the right questions, some of which we have been lucky enough to answer. A general overview of the key ideas of quantum error correction is given. We discuss how quantum entanglement is the key to protecting quantum states from decoherence in a manner which, in a theoretical sense, is as effective as the protection of digital data from bit noise. We also discuss five general criteria which must be satisfied to implement a quantum computer in the laboratory, and we illustrate the application of these criteria by discussing our ideas for creating a quantum computer out of the spin states of coupled quantum dots.