Search

Quantum metrology is supposed to significantly improve the precision of parameter estimation by utilizing suitable quantum resources. However, the predicted precision can be severely distorted by realistic noises. Here, we propose a control-enhanced quantum metrology scheme to defend against these noises for improving the metrology performance. Our scheme can automatically alter the parameter encoding dynamics with adjustable controls, thus leading to optimal resultant states that are less sensitive to the noises under consideration. As a demonstration, we numerically apply it to the problem of frequency estimation under several typical Markovian noise channels. Through comparing our control-enhanced scheme with the standard scheme and the ancilla-assisted scheme, we show that our scheme performs better and can improve the estimation precision up to around one order of magnitude. Furthermore, we conduct a proof-of-principle experiment in nuclear magnetic resonance system to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The research here is helpful for current quantum platforms to harness the power of quantum metrology in realistic noise environments., 9 pages, 5 figures

Quantum error correction plays an important role in fault-tolerant quantum information processing. It is usually difficult to experimentally realize quantum error correction, as it requires multiple qubits and quantum gates with high fidelity. Here we propose a simple quantum error-correcting code for the detected amplitude damping channel. The code requires only two qubits. We implement the encoding, the channel, and the recovery on an optical platform, the IBM Q System, and a nuclear magnetic resonance system. For all of these systems, the error correction advantage appears when the damping rate exceeds some threshold. We compare the features of these quantum information processing systems used and demonstrate the advantage of quantum error correction on current quantum computing platforms., 26 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables

In open quantum systems, the precision of metrology inevitably suffers from the noise. {In Markovian open quantum dynamics, the precision can not be improved by using entangled probes although the measurement time is effectively shortened.} However, it was predicted over one decade ago that in a non-Markovian one, the error can be significantly reduced by the quantum Zeno effect (QZE) [Chin, Huelga, and Plenio, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{109}, 233601 (2012)]. In this work, we apply a recently-developed quantum simulation approach to experimentally verify that entangled probes can improve the precision of metrology by the QZE. Up to $n=7$ qubits, we demonstrate that the precision has been improved by a factor of $n^{1/4}$, which is consistent with the theoretical prediction. Our quantum simulation approach may provide an intriguing platform for experimental verification of various quantum metrology schemes., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

Quantum state transfer between two distant parties is at the heart of quantum computation and quantum communication. Among the various protocols, the counterdiabatic driving (CD) method, by suppressing the unwanted transitions with an auxiliary Hamiltonian H cd ( t ) , offers a fast and robust strategy to transfer quantum states. However, H cd ( t ) term often takes a complicated form in higher-dimensional systems and is difficult to realize in experiment. Recently, the Floquet-engineered method was proposed to emulate the dynamics induced by H cd ( t ) without the need for complex interactions in multi-qubit systems, which can accelerate the adiabatic process through the fast-oscillating control in the original Hamiltonian H 0 ( t ) . Here, we apply this method in the Heisenberg spin chains, with only control of the two marginal couplings, to achieve the fast, high-fidelity, and robust quantum state transfer. Then we report an experimental implementation of our scheme using a nuclear magnetic resonance simulator. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this method in complex many-body system and thus provide a new alternative to realize the high-fidelity quantum state manipulation in practice.

Developments of quantum techniques have drastically improved the control ability of current quantum processors. Characterizing quantum simulations performed on these processors has become a vital topic in quantum information processing. Traditional characterizing techniques such as quantum process and state tomography fully characterize quantum simulations, but always with the exponentially increased resource cost, unfortunately. It may place their applications only in small-scale quantum systems. Meanwhile, many potential characterizing methods have been put forward in the past decades. In this work we experimentally test and compare different methods for characterizing quantum simulations of Ising Hamiltonians on the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) platform, including the recent quantum Hamiltonian tomography with polynomial complexity to estimate the generator of quantum simulations and nonrepetitive direct fidelity estimation with the Monte Carlo method to estimate the fidelity of dynamical states. We also experimentally estimate the parameters of Hamiltonian via full quantum process tomography and quantum state tomography for the comparison. These methods have merits and demerits in accuracy, the required resource, and prior knowledge. Our experiments test the performance of different methods while providing a beneficial reference for characterizing quantum simulations in the future.

Principal component analysis (PCA) is a widely applied but rather time-consuming tool in machine learning techniques. In 2014, Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost proposed a quantum PCA (qPCA) algorithm [Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost, Nat. Phys. 10, 631 (2014)NPAHAX1745-247310.1038/nphys3029] that still lacks experimental demonstration due to the experimental challenges in preparing multiple quantum state copies and implementing quantum phase estimations. Here, we propose a new qPCA algorithm using the hybrid classical-quantum control, where parameterized quantum circuits are optimized with simple measurement observables, which significantly reduces the experimental complexity. As one important PCA application, we implement a human face recognition process using the images from the Yale Face Dataset. By training our quantum processor, the eigenface information in the training dataset is encoded into the parameterized quantum circuit, and the quantum processor learns to recognize new face images from the test dataset with high fidelities. Our work paves a new avenue toward the study of qPCA applications in theory and experiment.

It is natural to measure the observables from the Hamiltonian-based quantum dynamics, and its inverse process that Hamiltonians are estimated from the measured data also is a vital topic. In this work, we propose a recurrent neural network to learn the parameters of the target Hamiltonians from the temporal records of single-qubit measurements. The method does not require the assumption of ground states and only measures single-qubit observables. It is applicable on both time-independent and time-dependent Hamiltonians and can simultaneously capture the magnitude and sign of Hamiltonian parameters. Taking quantum Ising Hamiltonians with the nearest-neighbor interactions as examples, we trained our recurrent neural networks to learn the Hamiltonian parameters with high accuracy, including the magnetic fields and coupling values. The numerical study also shows that our method has good robustness against the measurement noise and decoherence effect. Therefore, it has widespread applications in estimating the parameters of quantum devices and characterizing the Hamiltonian-based quantum dynamics., 9 pages and 6 figures. All comments are welcome

The Yang-Baxter equation (YBE) has created many applications in the integrable models of the statistical mechanics. It is recently shown that the YBE can be further applied in quantum information processing. Conversely, quantum simulation also provides novel approaches for effectively checking the YBE in quantum devices. Here, we adopted the method inspired by the previous work to experimentally perform the simulation of the YBE on a four-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance quantum processor. Whether the YBE is satisfied or not can be preliminarily determined by measuring the ancillary qubit without the assistance of quantum state tomography, and two hand sides of the YBE are concurrently simulated, not in separate forms involved in the existing protocols. The experimental result shows that the discrimination accuracy is over 98.1% when the condition of YBE is satisfied. The global and local entanglements in the YBE system are also studied by the numerical simulation and experiments. It is found that the YBE is not only a tool to yield the global entanglement but also the symptom when the local entanglement is equal to each other.

Counterdiabatic driving (CD) offers a fast and robust strategy to manipulate and prepare the quantum state in multibody systems. However, the exact CD term involving the spectral properties of the system is difficult to calculate and generally takes a complicated form for higher-dimensional complex systems. Recently, Sels and Polkovnikov [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 114, E3909 (2017)] proposed a variational method to optimally approximate the CD term with no need for the full spectral information of the original Hamiltonian. Using a nuclear-magnetic-resonance setup, here we report an experimental demonstration of this method to construct available shortcuts to adiabaticity in a nonintegrable spin-$1/2$ chain via only local controls. In this process, the ground state of such a system is rapidly prepared and the final state fidelity is significantly increased compared with the traditional adiabatic method. Our experiments prove the feasibility of this variational method to design CD in practice, and thus it is a promising strategy for fast, high-fidelity quantum-state manipulation in complex and noisy quantum systems.

Nonlinear quantum metrology may exhibit better precision scalings. For example, the uncertainty of an estimated phase may scale as Δ ϕ ∝ 1 / N 2 under quadratic phase accumulation, which is 1 / N times smaller than the linear counterpart, where N is probe number. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the nonlinear quantum metrology by using a spin-I ( I > 1 / 2 ) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) ensemble that can be mapped into a system of N = 2 I spin-1/2 particles and the quadratic interaction can be utilized for the quadratic phase accumulation. Our experimental results show that the phase uncertainty can scale as Δ ϕ ∝ 1 / ( N 2 - 1 ) by optimizing the input states, when N is an odd number. In addition, the interferometric measurement with quadratic interaction provides a new way for estimating the quadrupolar coupling strength in an NMR system. Our system may be further extended to exotic nonlinear quantum metrology with higher order many-body interactions.

To obtain a complete description of a quantum system, one usually employs standard quantum state tomography, which however requires exponential number of measurements to perform and hence is impractical when the system's size grows large. In this work, we introduce a self-learning tomographic scheme based on the variational hybrid quantum-classical method. The key part of the scheme is a learning procedure, in which we learn a control sequence capable of driving the unknown target state coherently to a simple fiducial state, so that the target state can be directly reconstructed by applying the control sequence reversely. In this manner, the state tomography problem is converted to a state-to-state transfer problem. To solve the latter problem, we use the closed-loop learning control approach. Our scheme is further experimentally tested using techniques of a 4-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance. {Experimental results indicate that the proposed tomographic scheme can handle a broad class of states including entangled states in quantum information, as well as dynamical states of quantum many-body systems common to condensed matter physics., 9 pages, 5 figures. To be published in Physical Review Applied

The detection of topological phases of matter has become a central issue in recent years. Conventionally, the realization of a specific topological phase in condensed matter physics relies on probing the underlying surface band dispersion or quantum transport signature of a real material, which may be imperfect or even absent. On the other hand, quantum simulation offers an alternative approach to directly measure the topological invariant on a universal quantum computer. However, experimentally demonstrating high-dimensional topological phases remains a challenge due to the technical limitations of current experimental platforms. Here, we investigate the three-dimensional topological insulators in the AIII (chiral unitary) symmetry class, which yet lack experimental realization. Using the nuclear magnetic resonance system, we experimentally demonstrate their topological properties, where a dynamical quenching approach is adopted and the dynamical bulk-boundary correspondence in the momentum space is observed. As a result, the topological invariants are measured with high precision on the band-inversion surface, exhibiting robustness to the decoherence effect. Our Letter paves the way toward the quantum simulation of topological phases of matter in higher dimensions and more complex systems through controllable quantum phases transitions.

Indefinite causal order (ICO) is playing a key role in recent quantum technologies. Here, we experimentally study quantum thermodynamics driven by ICO on nuclear spins using the nuclear magnetic resonance system. We realize the ICO of two thermalizing channels to exhibit how the mechanism works, and show that the working substance can be cooled or heated albeit it undergoes thermal contacts with reservoirs of the same temperature. Moreover, we construct a single cycle of the ICO refrigerator based on the Maxwell's demon mechanism, and evaluate its performance by measuring the work consumption and the heat energy extracted from the low-temperature reservoir. Unlike classical refrigerators in which the coefficient of performance (COP) is perversely higher the closer the temperature of the high-temperature and low-temperature reservoirs are to each other, the ICO refrigerator's COP is always bounded to small values due to the non-unit success probability in projecting the ancillary qubit to the preferable subspace. To enhance the COP, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a general framework based on the density matrix exponentiation (DME) approach, as an extension to the ICO refrigeration. The COP is observed to be enhanced by more than three times with the DME approach. Our work demonstrates a new way for non-classical heat exchange, and paves the way towards construction of quantum refrigerators on a quantum system., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The creation of multipartite entangled states is a key task of quantum information processing. Among the various implementations, shortcut to adiabaticity (STA) offers a fast and robust means for generating entanglement. The traditional counterdiabatic driving, as a conventional and simple method for STA, suppresses transitions with an auxiliary Hamiltonian, but its complex interactions in many-body systems may hamper the feasibility of experimental implementation. To avoid this drawback, a flexible and efficient way was proposed theoretically by Chen et al. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 052109 (2016)] by substituting the counterdiabatic terms. Inspired by this work, we devise a practical protocol for preparing the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state on the Ising spin model via STA by partial suppression of the nonadiabatic transitions, which can obviously reduce the complexity in experiments compared with the original method. We also experimentally demonstrate the viability of our scheme with a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum simulator. This work provides an alternative method to realize fast coherent quantum control for a multiqubit system in experiments.

Thanks to the quantum simulation, more and more problems in quantum mechanics which were previously inaccessible are now open to us. Capitalizing on the state-of-the-art techniques on quantum coherent control developed in past few decades, e.g., the high-precision quantum gate manipulating, the time-reversal harnessing, the high-fidelity state preparation and tomography, the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system offers a unique platform for quantum simulation of many-body physics and high-energy physics. Here, we review the recent experimental progress and discuss the prospects for quantum simulation realized on NMR systems.

Modern applications of quantum control in quantum information science and technology require the precise characterization of quantum states and quantum channels. In particular, high-performance quantum state engineering often demands that quantum states are transferred with optimal efficiency via realizable controlled evolution, the latter often modeled by quantum channels. When an appropriate quantum control model for an interested system is constructed, the exploration of optimal bounds on state transfer for the underlying quantum channel is then an important task. In this work, we analyze the state transfer efficiency problem for different class of quantum channels, including unitary, mixed unitary and Markovian. We then apply the theory to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. We show that two most commonly used control techniques in NMR, namely gradient field control and phase cycling, can be described by mixed unitary channels. Then we show that employing mixed unitary channels does not extend the unitarily accessible region of states. Also, we present a strategy of optimal experiment design, which incorporates coherent radio-frequency field control, gradient field control and phase cycling, aiming at maximizing state transfer efficiency and meanwhile minimizing the number of experiments required. Finally, we perform pseudopure state preparation experiments on two- and three-spin systems, in order to test the bound theory and to demonstrate the usefulness of non-unitary control means., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

Topologically ordered phase has emerged as one of most exciting concepts that not only broadens our understanding of phases of matter, but also has been found to have potential application in fault-tolerant quantum computation. The direct measurement of topological properties, however, is still a challenge especially in interacting quantum system. Here we realize one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chains using nuclear magnetic resonance simulators and observe the interaction-induced topological transitions, where Berry curvature in the parameter space of Hamiltonian is probed by means of dynamical response and then the first Chern number is extracted by integrating the curvature over the closed surface. The utilized experimental method provides a powerful means to explore topological phenomena in quantum systems with many-body interactions., 5 pages (4 figures) + 1 page (3 figures)

Pseudo-pure state (PPS) preparation is crucial in nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computation. There have been some methods in spin-1/2 systems and a few attempts in quadrupolar spin systems. As optimal control via gradient ascent pulses engineering (GRAPE) has been widely used in quantum information science, we apply this technique to PPS preparation in quadrupolar spin systems. This approach shows an effective and fast quantum control method for both the state preparation and the realization of quantum gates in quadrupolar systems.

The photoluminescence properties of BaGdB 9 O 16 :Tb 3+ under vacuum UV and UV excitation were investigated, and visible quantum cutting through downconversion was observed in this phosphor. Upon Tb 3+ 4f 8 → 4f 7 5d 1 excitation, one UV photon absorbed by Tb 3+ could be split into more than one visible photon emitted by Tb 3+ through cross relaxation and direct energy transfer. To rationalize the quantum cutting effect, the proper mechanism was proposed. According to calculations, the maximal quantum efficiency was up to 161.3%. The quantum efficiency variation of BaGd 1―x B 9 O 16 :Tb 3+ x would depend on the concentration of Tb 3+ . Quantum efficiency would increase with the increased concentration of Tb 3+ and could not be identified until the 5 D 3 → 7 F J transitions of Tb 3+ Quenched completely.