Person:

Lukin, Mikhail

Quantum information processed in strongly correlated states of matter can provide built in hardware protection against errors. We may encode information in highly non local degrees of freedom, such as using three dimensional spin lattices for subsystem codes or two dimensional spin lattices for topologically ordered surface codes and measurement based codes. Recently, in [L. Jiang et al., Nature Physics 4, 482 (2008)] the authors showed how to manipulate these global degrees of freedom using optical lattices coupled to a bosonic degree of freedom via a cavity. We elaborate on these ideas and recapitulate two approaches to implement many body gates necessary for quantum information processing, both relying on controlled interactions of an ancillary cavity mode with the spin system and single ancilla particles. The main focus of the present paper is to analyze the effect of imperfections such a cavity decay and collective and individual spin decoherence. We present strategies to fight decoherence by monitoring cavity decay and show that high gate fidelities can be achieved in the strong coupling regime of cavity-QED with state of the art parameters.

We suggest a new method for quantum optical control with nanoscale resolution. Our method allows for coherent far-field manipulation of individual quantum systems with spatial selectivity that is not limited by the wavelength of radiation and can, in principle, approach a few nanometers. The selectivity is enabled by the nonlinear atomic response, under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency, to a control beam with intensity vanishing at a certain location. Practical performance of this technique and its potential applications to quantum information science with cold atoms, ions, and solid-state qubits are discussed.

We investigate the coherence properties of individual nuclear spin quantum bits in diamond [Dutt et al., Science, 316, 1312 (2007)] when a proximal electronic spin associated with a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is being interrogated by optical radiation. The resulting nuclear spin dynamics are governed by time-dependent hyperfine interaction associated with rapid electronic transitions, which can be described by a spin-fluctuator model. We show that due to a process analogous to motional averaging in nuclear magnetic resonance, the nuclear spin coherence can be preserved after a large number of optical excitation cycles. Our theoretical analysis is in good agreement with experimental results. It indicates a novel approach that could potentially isolate the nuclear spin system completely from the electronic environment.

We present a protocol to prepare decoherence-free cluster states using ultracold atoms loaded in a two dimensional superlattice. The superlattice geometry leads to an array of 2×2 plaquettes, each of them holding four spin-1∕2 particles that can be used for encoding a single logical qubit in the twofold singlet subspace, insensitive to uniform magnetic field fluctuations in any direction. Dynamical manipulation of the supperlattice yields distinct inter- and intraplaquette interactions and permits us to realize one qubit and two qubit gates with high fidelity, leading to the generation of universal cluster states for measurement based quantum computation. Our proposal based on inter- and intraplaquette interactions also opens the path to study polymerized Hamiltonians which support ground states describing arbitrary quantum circuits.

We describe a technique that enables a strong coherent coupling between a single electronic spin qubit associated with a nitrogen-vacancy impurity in diamond and the quantized motion of a magnetized nanomechanical resonator tip. This coupling is achieved via careful preparation of dressed spin states which are highly sensitive to the motion of the resonator but insensitive to perturbations from the nuclear-spin bath. In combination with optical pumping techniques, the coherent exchange between spin and motional excitations enables ground-state cooling and controlled generation of arbitrary quantum superpositions of resonator states Optical spin readout techniques provide a general measurement toolbox for the resonator with quantum limited precision.

We consider a protocol for the control of few-qubit registers comprising one electronic spin embedded in a nuclear spin bath. We show how to isolate a few proximal nuclear spins from the rest of the bath and use them as building blocks for a potentially scalable quantum information processor. We describe how coherent control techniques based on magnetic resonance methods can be adapted to these solid-state spin systems, to provide not only efficient, high fidelity manipulation but also decoupling from the spin bath. As an example, we analyze feasible performances and practical limitations in the realistic setting of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

We propose an approach to implement quantum repeaters for long-distance quantum communication. Our protocol generates a backbone of encoded Bell pairs and uses the procedure of classical error correction during simultaneous entanglement connection. We illustrate that the repeater protocol with simple Calderbank-Shor-Steane encoding can significantly extend the communication distance, while still maintaining a fast key generation rate.

Robust measurement of single quantum bits plays a key role in the realization of quantum computation and communication as well as in quantum metrology and sensing. We have implemented a method for the improved readout of single electronic spin qubits in solid-state systems. The method makes use of quantum logic operations on a system consisting of a single electronic spin and several proximal nuclear spin ancillae in order to repetitively readout the state of the electronic spin. Using coherent manipulation of a single nitrogen vacancy center in room-temperature diamond, full quantum control of an electronic-nuclear system consisting of up to three spins was achieved. We took advantage of a single nuclear-spin memory in order to obtain a 10-fold enhancement in the signal amplitude of the electronic spin readout. We also present a two-level, concatenated procedure to improve the readout by use of a pair of nuclear spin ancillae, an important step toward the realization of robust quantum information processors using electronic- and nuclear-spin qubits. Our technique can be used to improve the sensitivity and speed of spin-based nanoscale diamond magnetometers.

We demonstrate and characterize two coherent phenomena that can mitigate the effects of laser phase noise for Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT): a laser-power-broadening-resistant resonance in the transmitted intensity cross-correlation between EIT optical fields; and a resonant suppression of the conversion of laser phase noise to intensity noise when one-photon noise dominates over two-photon-detuning noise. Our experimental observations are in good agreement with both an intuitive physical picture and numerical calculations. The results have wide-ranging applications to spectroscopy, atomic clocks and magnetometers.