No Arabic abstract
Any single-qubit unitary operation or quantum gate can be considered a rotation. Typical experimental implementations of single-qubit gates involve two or three fixed rotation axes, and up to three rotation steps. Here we show that, if the rotation axes can be tuned arbitrarily in a fixed plane, then two rotation steps are sufficient for implementing a single-qubit gate, and one rotation step is sufficient for implementing a state transformation. The results are relevant for exchange-only logical qubits encoded in three-spin blocks, which are important for universal quantum computation in decoherence free subsystems and subspaces.
We investigate capacitively coupled two-qubit quantum gates based on quantum dots. For exchange-only coded qubits electron spin $S$ and its projection $S_z$ are exact quantum numbers. Capacitive coupling between qubits, as distinct from interqubit exchange, preserves these quantum numbers. We prove, both analytically and numerically, that conservation of the spins of individual qubits has dramatic effect on performance of two-qubit gates. By varying the level splittings of individual qubits, $J_a$ and $J_b$, and the interqubit coupling time $t$, we can find an infinite number of triples $(J_a, J_b, t)$ for which the two-qubit entanglement, in combination with appropriate single-qubit rotations, can produce an exact CNOT gate. This statement is true for practically arbitrary magnitude and form of capacitive interqubit coupling. Our findings promise a large decrease in the number of nonlocal (two-qubit) operations in quantum circuits.
We employ pulse shaping to abate single-qubit gate errors arising from the weak anharmonicity of transmon superconducting qubits. By applying shaped pulses to both quadratures of rotation, a phase error induced by the presence of higher levels is corrected. Using a derivative of the control on the quadrature channel, we are able to remove the effect of the anharmonic levels for multiple qubits coupled to a microwave resonator. Randomized benchmarking is used to quantify the average error per gate, achieving a minimum of 0.007+/-0.005 using 4 ns-wide pulse.
Universal quantum computation will require qubit technology based on a scalable platform, together with quantum error correction protocols that place strict limits on the maximum infidelities for one- and two-qubit gate operations. While a variety of qubit systems have shown high fidelities at the one-qubit level, superconductor technologies have been the only solid-state qubits manufactured via standard lithographic techniques which have demonstrated two-qubit fidelities near the fault-tolerant threshold. Silicon-based quantum dot qubits are also amenable to large-scale manufacture and can achieve high single-qubit gate fidelities (exceeding 99.9%) using isotopically enriched silicon. However, while two-qubit gates have been demonstrated in silicon, it has not yet been possible to rigorously assess their fidelities using randomized benchmarking, since this requires sequences of significant numbers of qubit operations ($gtrsim 20$) to be completed with non-vanishing fidelity. Here, for qubits encoded on the electron spin states of gate-defined quantum dots, we demonstrate Bell state tomography with fidelities ranging from 80% to 89%, and two-qubit randomized benchmarking with an average Clifford gate fidelity of 94.7% and average Controlled-ROT (CROT) fidelity of 98.0%. These fidelities are found to be limited by the relatively slow gate times employed here compared with the decoherence times $T_2^*$ of the qubits. Silicon qubit designs employing fast gate operations based on high Rabi frequencies, together with advanced pulsing techniques, should therefore enable significantly higher fidelities in the near future.
We investigate qubit measurements using a single electron transistor (SET). Applying the Schrodinger equation to the entire system we find that an asymmetric SET is considerably more efficient than a symmetric SET. The asymmetric SET becomes close to an ideal detector in the large asymmetry limit. We also compared the SET detector with a point-contact detector. This comparison allows us to illuminate the relation between information gain in the measurement process and the decoherence generated by these measurement devices.
The possibility of quantum computing with spins in germanium nanoscale transistors has recently attracted interest since it promises highly tuneable qubits that have encouraging coherence times. We here present the first complete theory of the orbital states of Ge donor electrons, and use it to show that Ge could have significant advantages over silicon in the implementation of a donor-based quantum processor architecture. We show that the stronger spin-orbit interaction and the larger electron donor wave functions for Ge donors allow for greater tuning of the single qubit energy than for those in Si crystals, thus enabling a large speedup of selective (local) quantum gates. Further, exchange coupling between neighboring donor qubits is shown to be much larger in Ge than in Si, and we show that this greatly relaxes the precision in donor placement needed for robust two-qubit gates. To do this we compare two statistical distributions for Ge:P and Si:P pair couplings, corresponding to realistic donor implantation misplacement, and find that the spin couplings in Ge:P have a $33%$ chance of being within an order of magnitude of the largest coupling, compared with only $10%$ for the Si:P donors. This allows fast, parallel and robust architectures for quantum computing with donors in Ge.