No Arabic abstract
In the era of digital quantum computing, optimal digitized pulses are requisite for efficient quantum control. This goal is translated into dynamic programming, in which a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agent is gifted. As a reference, shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA) provide analytical approaches to adiabatic speed up by pulse control. Here, we select single-component control of qubits, resembling the ubiquitous two-level Landau-Zener problem for gate operation. We aim at obtaining fast and robust digital pulses by combining STA and DRL algorithm. In particular, we find that DRL leads to robust digital quantum control with operation time bounded by quantum speed limits dictated by STA. In addition, we demonstrate that robustness against systematic errors can be achieved by DRL without any input from STA. Our results introduce a general framework of digital quantum control, leading to a promising enhancement in quantum information processing.
We construct mode-selective effective models describing the interaction of N quantum emitters (QEs) with the localised surface plasmon polaritons (LSPs) supported by a spherical metal nanoparticle (MNP) in an arbitrary geometric arrangement of the QEs. We develop a general formulation in which the field response in the presence of the nanosystem can be decomposed into orthogonal modes with the spherical symmetry as an example. We apply the model in the context of quantum information, investigating on the possibility of using the LSPs as mediators of an efficient control of population transfer between two QEs. We show that a Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage configuration allows such a transfer via a decoherence-free dark state when the QEs are located on the same side of the MNP and very closed to it, whereas the transfer is blocked when the emitters are positioned at the opposite sides of the MNP. We explain this blockade by the destructive superposition of all the interacting plasmonic modes.
Deep reinforcement learning has been recognized as an efficient technique to design optimal strategies for different complex systems without prior knowledge of the control landscape. To achieve a fast and precise control for quantum systems, we propose a novel deep reinforcement learning approach by constructing a curriculum consisting of a set of intermediate tasks defined by a fidelity threshold. Tasks among a curriculum can be statically determined using empirical knowledge or adaptively generated with the learning process. By transferring knowledge between two successive tasks and sequencing tasks according to their difficulties, the proposed curriculum-based deep reinforcement learning (CDRL) method enables the agent to focus on easy tasks in the early stage, then move onto difficult tasks, and eventually approaches the final task. Numerical simulations on closed quantum systems and open quantum systems demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits improved control performance for quantum systems and also provides an efficient way to identify optimal strategies with fewer control pulses.
We report theoretical studies of adiabatic population transfer using dressed spin states. Quantum optimal control using the algorithm of Chopped Random Basis (CRAB) has been implemented in a negatively charged diamond nitrogen vacancy center that is coupled to a strong and resonant microwave field. We show that the dressed spin states are highly effective in suppressing effects of spin dephasing on adiabatic population transfer. The numerical simulation also demonstrates that CRAB-based quantum optimal control can enable an efficient and robust adiabatic population transfer.
Quantum adiabatic evolution, an important fundamental concept inphysics, describes the dynamical evolution arbitrarily close to the instantaneous eigenstate of a slowly driven Hamiltonian. In most systems undergoing spontaneous symmetry-breaking transitions, their two lowest eigenstates change from non-degenerate to degenerate. Therefore, due to the corresponding energy-gap vanishes, the conventional adiabatic condition becomes invalid. Here we explore the existence of quantum adiabatic evolutions in spontaneous symmetry-breaking transitions and derive a symmetry-dependent adiabatic condition. Because the driven Hamiltonian conserves the symmetry in the whole process, the transition between different instantaneous eigenstates with different symmetries is forbidden. Therefore, even if the minimum energy-gap vanishes, symmetry-protected quantum adiabatic evolutioncan still appear when the driven system varies according to the symmetry-dependent adiabatic condition. This study not only advances our understandings of quantum adiabatic evolution and spontaneous symmetry-breaking transitions, but also provides extensive applications ranging from quantum state engineering, topological Thouless pumping to quantum computing.
Model bias is an inherent limitation of the current dominant approach to optimal quantum control, which relies on a system simulation for optimization of control policies. To overcome this limitation, we propose a circuit-based approach for training a reinforcement learning agent on quantum control tasks in a model-free way. Given a continuously parameterized control circuit, the agent learns its parameters through trial-and-error interaction with the quantum system, using measurements as the only source of information about the quantum state. By focusing on the task of quantum state preparation in a harmonic oscillator coupled to an ancilla qubit, we show how to reward the learning agent using measurements of experimentally available observables. We demonstrate by numerical simulations preparation of arbitrary states using both open- and closed-loop control through adaptive quantum feedback. Our work is of immediate relevance to superconducting circuits and trapped ions platforms where such training can be implemented real-time in an experiment, allowing complete elimination of model bias and the adaptation of quantum control policies to the specific system in which they are deployed.