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Experimental noise filtering by quantum control

Nature Physics volume 10, pages 825–829 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Extrinsic interference is routinely faced in systems engineering, and a common solution is to rely on a broad class of filtering techniques to afford stability to intrinsically unstable systems or isolate particular signals from a noisy background. Experimentalists leading the development of a new generation of quantum-enabled technologies similarly encounter time-varying noise in realistic laboratory settings. They face substantial challenges in either suppressing such noise for high-fidelity quantum operations1 or controllably exploiting it in quantum-enhanced sensing2,3,4 or system identification tasks 5,6, due to a lack of efficient, validated approaches to understanding and predicting quantum dynamics in the presence of realistic time-varying noise. In this work we use the theory of quantum control engineering7,8 and experiments with trapped 171Yb+ ions to study the dynamics of controlled quantum systems. Our results provide the first experimental validation of generalized filter-transfer functions casting arbitrary quantum control operations on qubits as noise spectral filters9,10. We demonstrate the utility of these constructs for directly predicting the evolution of a quantum state in a realistic noisy environment as well as for developing novel robust control and sensing protocols. These experiments provide a significant advance in our understanding of the physics underlying controlled quantum dynamics, and unlock new capabilities for the emerging field of quantum systems engineering.

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Figure 1: Noise filters and experimental validation of the predictive power of the filter-transfer function.
Figure 2: Synthesis of high-pass amplitude-modulated filters from the Walsh functions.
Figure 3: Construction of the first-order Walsh amplitude-modulated dephasing-suppressing filter.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Fisk, M. Lawn, M. Wouters and B. Warrington for technical assistance and K. Brown, J. T. Merrill and L. Viola for useful discussions. This work partially supported by the US Army Research Office under Contract Number W911NF-11-1-0068, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems CE110001013, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), through the Army Research Office, and the Lockheed Martin Corporation. X.Z. acknowledges useful discussions with G. L. Long and support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 11175094 and No. 91221205) and the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2011CB9216002).

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Author notes

  1. D. Hayes

    Present address: Present address: Lockheed Martin Corporation, USA.,

  2. A. Soare and H. Ball: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, School of Physics, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

    A. Soare, H. Ball, D. Hayes, J. Sastrawan, M. C. Jarratt, J. J. McLoughlin, T. J. Green & M. J. Biercuk

  2. National Measurement Institute, West Lindfield, NSW 2070, Australia

    A. Soare, H. Ball, D. Hayes, J. Sastrawan, M. C. Jarratt, J. J. McLoughlin, T. J. Green & M. J. Biercuk

  3. State Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

    X. Zhen

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Contributions

A.S., H.B., D.H. and M.J.B. conceived and performed the experiments, built experimental apparatus, contributed to data analysis and wrote the manuscript. T.J.G. conceived the relevant theoretical constructs. J.S., M.C.J. and X.Z. assisted with development of the experimental system and data collection. J.J.M. assisted with data collection.

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Correspondence to M. J. Biercuk.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Soare, A., Ball, H., Hayes, D. et al. Experimental noise filtering by quantum control. Nature Phys 10, 825–829 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3115

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