No Arabic abstract
Entanglement is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, and is a primary resource in quantum information systems. Its manipulation remains a central challenge in the development of quantum technology. In this work, we demonstrate a device which can generate, manipulate, and analyse two-qubit entangled states, using miniature and mass-manufacturable silicon photonics. By combining four photon-pair sources with a reconfigurable six-mode interferometer, embedding a switchable entangling gate, we generate two-qubit entangled states, manipulate their entanglement, and analyse them, all in the same silicon chip. Using quantum state tomography, we show how our source can produce a range of entangled and separable states, and how our switchable controlled-Z gate operates on them, entangling them or making them separable depending on its configuration.
With qubit measurement and control fidelities above the threshold of fault-tolerance, much attention is moving towards the daunting task of scaling up the number of physical qubits to the large numbers needed for fault tolerant quantum computing. Here, quantum dot based spin qubits may offer significant advantages due to their potential for high densities, all-electrical operation, and integration onto an industrial platform. In this system, the initialisation, readout, single- and two-qubit gates have been demonstrated in various qubit representations. However, as seen with other small scale quantum computer demonstrations, combining these elements leads to new challenges involving qubit crosstalk, state leakage, calibration, and control hardware which provide invaluable insight towards scaling up. Here we address these challenges and demonstrate a programmable two-qubit quantum processor in silicon by performing both the Deutsch-Josza and the Grover search algorithms. In addition, we characterise the entanglement in our processor through quantum state tomography of Bell states measuring state fidelities between 85-89% and concurrences between 73-80%. These results pave the way for larger scale quantum computers using spins confined to quantum dots.
The capacity of a quantum gate to produce entangled states on a bipartite system is quantified in terms of the entangling power. This quantity is defined as the average of the linear entropy of entanglement of the states produced after applying a quantum gate over the whole set of separable states. Here we focus on symmetric two-qubit quantum gates, acting on the symmetric two-qubit space, and calculate the entangling power in terms of the appropriate local-invariant. A geometric description of the local equivalence classes of gates is given in terms of the $mathfrak{su}(3)$ Lie algebra root vectors. These vectors define a primitive cell with hexagonal symmetry on a plane, and through the Weyl group the minimum area on the plane containing the whole set of locally equivalent quantum gates is identified. We give conditions to determine when a given quantum gate produces maximally entangled states from separable ones (perfect entanglers). We found that these gates correspond to one fourth of the whole set of locally-distinct quantum gates. The theory developed here is applicable to three-level systems in general, where the non-locality of a quantum gate is related to its capacity to perform non-rigid transformations on the Majorana constellation of a state. The results are illustrated by an anisotropic Heisenberg model, the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, and two coupled quantized oscillators with cross-Kerr interaction.
The universal quantum computer is a device capable of simulating any physical system and represents a major goal for the field of quantum information science. Algorithms performed on such a device are predicted to offer significant gains for some important computational tasks. In the context of quantum information, universal refers to the ability to perform arbitrary unitary transformations in the systems computational space. The combination of arbitrary single-quantum-bit (qubit) gates with an entangling two-qubit gate is a gate set capable of achieving universal control of any number of qubits, provided that these gates can be performed repeatedly and between arbitrary pairs of qubits. Although gate sets have been demonstrated in several technologies, they have as yet been tailored toward specific tasks, forming a small subset of all unitary operators. Here we demonstrate a programmable quantum processor that realises arbitrary unitary transformations on two qubits, which are stored in trapped atomic ions. Using quantum state and process tomography, we characterise the fidelity of our implementation for 160 randomly chosen operations. This universal control is equivalent to simulating any pairwise interaction between spin-1/2 systems. A programmable multi-qubit register could form a core component of a large-scale quantum processor, and the methods used here are suitable for such a device.
Nuclear spins were among the first physical platforms to be considered for quantum information processing, because of their exceptional quantum coherence and atomic-scale footprint. However, their full potential for quantum computing has not yet been realized, due to the lack of methods to link nuclear qubits within a scalable device combined with multi-qubit operations with sufficient fidelity to sustain fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we demonstrate universal quantum logic operations using a pair of ion-implanted $^{31}$P nuclei in a silicon nanoelectronic device. A nuclear two-qubit controlled-Z gate is obtained by imparting a geometric phase to a shared electron spin, and used to prepare entangled Bell states with fidelities up to 94.2(2.7)%. The quantum operations are precisely characterised using gate set tomography (GST), yielding one-qubit gate fidelities up to 99.93(3)%, two-qubit gate fidelity of 99.21(14)% and two-qubit preparation/measurement fidelities of 98.95(4)%. These three metrics indicate that nuclear spins in silicon are approaching the performance demanded in fault-tolerant quantum processors. We then demonstrate entanglement between the two nuclei and the shared electron by producing a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger three-qubit state with 92.5(1.0)% fidelity. Since electron spin qubits in semiconductors can be further coupled to other electrons or physically shuttled across different locations, these results establish a viable route for scalable quantum information processing using nuclear spins.
We operate a superconducting quantum processor consisting of two tunable transmon qubits coupled by a swapping interaction, and equipped with non destructive single-shot readout of the two qubits. With this processor, we run the Grover search algorithm among four objects and find that the correct answer is retrieved after a single run with a success probability between 0.52 and 0.67, significantly larger than the 0.25 achieved with a classical algorithm. This constitutes a proof-of-concept for the quantum speed-up of electrical quantum processors.