Any optical quantum information processing machine would be comprised of fully-characterized constituent devices for both single state manipulations and tasks involving the interaction between multiple quantum optical states. Ideally for the latter, would be an apparatus capable of deterministic optical phase shifts that operate on input quantum states with the action mediated solely by auxiliary signal fields. Here we present the complete experimental characterization of a system designed for optically controlled phase shifts acting on single-photon level probe coherent states. Our setup is based on a warm vapor of rubidium atoms under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency with its dispersion properties modified through the use of an optically triggered N-type Kerr non-linearity. We fully characterize the performance of our device by sending in a set of input probe states and measuring the corresponding output via balanced homodyne tomography and subsequently performing the technique of coherent state quantum process tomography. This method provides us with the precise knowledge of how our optical phase shift will modify any arbitrary input quantum state engineered in the mode of the reconstruction.
Characterisation protocols have so far played a central role in the development of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers capable of impressive quantum feats. This trajectory is expected to continue in building the next generation of devices: ones that can surpass classical computers for particular tasks -- but progress in characterisation must keep up with the complexities of intricate device noise. A missing piece in the zoo of characterisation procedures is tomography which can completely describe non-Markovian dynamics. Here, we formally introduce a generalisation of quantum process tomography, which we call process tensor tomography. We detail the experimental requirements, construct the necessary post-processing algorithms for maximum-likelihood estimation, outline the best-practice aspects for accurate results, and make the procedure efficient for low-memory processes. The characterisation is the pathway to diagnostics and informed control of correlated noise. As an example application of the technique, we improve multi-time circuit fidelities on IBM Quantum devices for both standalone qubits and in the presence of crosstalk to a level comparable with the fault-tolerant noise threshold in a variety of different noise conditions. Our methods could form the core for carefully developed software that may help hardware consistently pass the fault-tolerant noise threshold.
We present a detailed error analysis of a Rydberg blockade mediated controlled-NOT quantum gate between two neutral atoms as demonstrated recently in Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 010503 (2010) and Phys. Rev. A 82, 030306 (2010). Numerical solutions of a master equation for the gate dynamics, including all known sources of technical error, are shown to be in good agreement with experiments. The primary sources of gate error are identified and suggestions given for future improvements. We also present numerical simulations of quantum process tomography to find the intrinsic fidelity, neglecting technical errors, of a Rydberg blockade controlled phase gate. The gate fidelity is characterized using trace overlap and trace distance measures. We show that the trace distance is linearly sensitive to errors arising from the finite Rydberg blockade shift and introduce a modified pulse sequence which corrects the linear errors. Our analysis shows that the intrinsic gate error extracted from simulated quantum process tomography can be under 0.002 for specific states of $^{87}$Rb or Cs atoms. The relation between the process fidelity and the gate error probability used in calculations of fault tolerance thresholds is discussed.
According to idealized models, a strong Kerr non-linearity may be used to build optical quantum gates for optical quantum information processing by inducing conditional phase shifts on quantum states. Recently, Shapiro (PRA 73, 062305 (2006)) argued that for a Kerr medium with non-instantaneous but fast response, essentially no phase shift is induced on two-single-photon input states, and thus a quantum gate build from such a medium cannot work. Here we show that a fast response Kerr medium induces some but very little phase shifts on a two-single-photon input state, and it is insufficient for high fidelity quantum computation. We point out that this is caused by the medium imparting spectral entanglement to the input photons. We further show that a way to circumvent this problem and achieve a high fidelity gate, is to engineer the dispersion properties of the medium to give a dominant spectral effect over the non-instantaneous response, in addition to satisfying a phase matching condition.
Time-bin qubits, where information is encoded in a single photon at different times, have been widely used in optical fiber and waveguide based quantum communications. With the recent developments in distributed quantum computation, it is logical to ask whether time-bin encoded qubits may be useful in that context. We have recently realized a time-bin qubit controlled-phase (C-Phase) gate using a 2 X 2 optical switch based on a lithium niobate waveguide, with which we demonstrated the generation of an entangled state. However, the experiment was performed with only a pair of input states, and thus the functionality of the C-Phase gate was not fully verified. In this research, we used quantum process tomography to establish a process fidelity of 97.1%. Furthermore, we demonstrated the controlled-NOT gate operation with a process fidelity greater than 94%. This study confirms that typical two-qubit logic gates used in quantum computational circuits can be implemented with time-bin qubits, and thus it is a significant step forward for realization of distributed quantum computation based on time-bin qubits.
Quantum process tomography is an experimental technique to fully characterize an unknown quantum process. Standard quantum process tomography suffers from exponentially scaling of the number of measurements with the increasing system size. In this work, we put forward a quantum machine learning algorithm which approximately encodes the unknown unitary quantum process into a relatively shallow depth parametric quantum circuit. We demonstrate our method by reconstructing the unitary quantum processes resulting from the quantum Hamiltonian evolution and random quantum circuits up to $8$ qubits. Results show that those quantum processes could be reconstructed with high fidelity, while the number of input states required are at least $2$ orders of magnitude less than required by the standard quantum process tomography.