No Arabic abstract
The ability to perform quantum error correction is a significant hurdle for scalable quantum information processing. A key requirement for multiple-round quantum error correction is the ability to dynamically extract entropy from ancilla qubits. Heat-bath algorithmic cooling is a method that uses quantum logic operations to move entropy from one subsystem to another, and permits cooling of a spin qubit below the closed system (Shannon) bound. Gamma-irradiated, $^{13}$C-labeled malonic acid provides up to 5 spin qubits: 1 spin-half electron and 4 spin-half nuclei. The nuclei are strongly hyperfine coupled to the electron and can be controlled either by exploiting the anisotropic part of the hyperfine interaction or by using pulsed electron-nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) techniques. The electron connects the nuclei to a heat-bath with a much colder effective temperature determined by the electrons thermal spin polarization. By accurately determining the full spin Hamiltonian and performing realistic algorithmic simulations, we show that an experimental demonstration of heat-bath algorithmic cooling beyond the Shannon bound is feasible in both 3-qubit and 5-qubit variants of this spin system. Similar techniques could be useful for polarizing nuclei in molecular or crystalline systems that allow for non-equilibrium optical polarization of the electron spin.
Heat-Bath Algorithmic cooling (HBAC) techniques provide ways to selectively enhance the polarization of target quantum subsystems. However, the cooling in these techniques are bounded. Here we report the first experimental observation of the HBAC cooling bound. We use HBAC to hyperpolarize nuclear spins in diamond. Using two carbon nuclear spins as the source of polarization (reset) and the 14N nuclear spin as the computation bit, we demonstrate that repeating a single cooling step increases the polarization beyond the initial reset polarization and reaches the cooling limit of HBAC. We benchmark the performance of our experiment over a range of variable reset polarization. With the ability to polarize the reset spins to different initial polarizations, we envisage that the proposed model could serve as a test bed for studies on Quantum Thermodynamics.
In a recent paper, PRL 114 100404, 2015, Raeisi and Mosca gave a limit for cooling with Heat-Bath Algorithmic Cooling (HBAC). Here we show how to exceed that limit by having correlation in the qubits-bath interaction.
Controlled preparation of highly pure quantum states is at the core of practical applications of quantum information science, from the state initialization of most quantum algorithms to a reliable supply of ancilla qubits that satisfy the fault-tolerance threshold for quantum error correction. Heat-bath algorithmic cooling has been shown to purify qubits by controlled redistribution of entropy and multiple contact with a bath, not only for ensemble implementations but also for technologies with strong but imperfect measurements. However, an implicit restriction about the interaction with the bath has been assumed in previous work. In this paper, we show that better purification can be achieved by removing that restriction. More concretely, we include correlations between the system and the bath, and we take advantage of these correlations to pump entropy out of the system into the bath. We introduce a tool for cooling algorithms, which we call state-reset, obtained when the coupling to the environment is generalized from individual-qubits relaxation to correlated-qubit relaxation. We present improved cooling algorithms which lead to an increase of purity beyond all the previous work, and relate our results to the Nuclear Overhauser Effect.
We show experimental results demonstrating multiple rounds of heat-bath algorithmic cooling in a 3 qubit solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor. By dynamically pumping entropy out of the system of interest and into the heat-bath, we are able show purification of a single qubit to a polarization 1.69 times that of the heat-bath and thus go beyond the Shannon bound for closed system cooling. The cooling algorithm implemented requires both high fidelity coherent control and a deliberate controlled interaction with the environment. We discuss the improvements in control that allowed this demonstration. This experimental work shows that given this level of quantum control in systems with sufficiently large polarizations, nearly pure qubits should be achievable.
A major problem facing the realisation of scalable solid-state quantum computing is that of overcoming decoherence - the process whereby phase information encoded in a qubit is lost as the qubit interacts with its environment. Due to the vast number of environmental degrees of freedom, it is challenging to accurately calculate decoherence times $T_2$, especially when the qubit and environment are highly correlated. Hybrid or mixed electron-nuclear spin qubits, such as donors in silicon, possess optimal working points (OWPs) which are sweet-spots for reduced decoherence in magnetic fields. Analysis of sharp variations of $T_2$ near OWPs was previously based on insensitivity to classical noise, even though hybrid qubits are situated in highly correlated quantum environments, such as the nuclear spin bath of $^{29}$Si impurities. This presented limited understanding of the decoherence mechanism and gave unreliable predictions for $T_2$. I present quantum many-body calculations of the qubit-bath dynamics, which (i) yield $T_2$ for hybrid qubits in excellent agreement with experiments in multiple regimes, (ii) elucidate the many-body nature of the nuclear spin bath and (iii) expose significant differences between quantum-bath and classical-field decoherence. To achieve these, the cluster correlation expansion was adapted to include electron-nuclear state mixing. In addition, an analysis supported by experiment was carried out to characterise the nuclear spin bath for a bismuth donor as the hybrid qubit, a simple analytical formula for $T_2$ was derived with predictions in agreement with experiment, and the established method of dynamical decoupling was combined with operating near OWPs in order to maximise $T_2$. Finally, the decoherence of a $^{29}$Si spin in proximity to the hybrid qubit was studied, in order to establish the feasibility for its use as a quantum register.