arXiv subjects

Abhishek Shukla

Publications and source records attributed to Abhishek Shukla.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Discriminating between Lüders and von Neumann measuring devices: An NMR investigation

Measurement of an observable on a quantum system involves a probabilistic collapse of the quantum state and a corresponding measurement outcome. Lüders and von Neumann state update rules attempt to describe the above phenomenological observations. These rules are identical for a nondegenerate observable, but differ for a degenerate observable. While Lüders rule preserves superpositions within a degenerate subspace under a measurement of the corresponding degenerate observable, the von Neumann rule does not. Recently Hegerfeldt and Mayato [Phys. Rev. A, 85, 032116 (2012)] had formulated a protocol to discriminate between the two types of measuring devices. Here we have reformulated this protocol for quantum registers comprising of system and ancilla qubits. We then experimentally investigated this protocol using nulear spin systems with the help of NMR techniques, and found that Lüders rule is favoured.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Benford's distribution in extrasolar world: Do the exoplanets follow Benford's distribution?

In many real life situations, it is observed that the first digits (i.e., $1,2,\ldots,9$) of a numerical data-set, which is expressed using decimal system, do not follow a random distribution. Instead, smaller numbers are favoured by nature in accordance with a logarithmic distribution law, which is referred to as Benford's law. The existence and applicability of this empirical law have been extensively studied by physicists, accountants, computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, etc., and it has been observed that a large number of data-sets related to diverse problems follow this distribution. However, applicability of Benford's law has been hardly tested for extrasolar objects. Motivated by this fact, this paper investigates the existence of Benford's distribution in the extrasolar world using Kepler data for exoplanets. The investigation has revealed the presence of Benford's distribution in various physical properties of these exoplanets. Further, Benford goodness parameters are computed to provide a quantitative measure of coincidence of real data with the ideal values obtained from Benford's distribution. The quantitative analysis and the plots have revealed that several physical parameters associated with the exoplanets (e.g., mass, volume, density, orbital semi-major axis, orbital period, and radial velocity) nicely follow Benford's distribution, whereas some physical parameters (e.g., total proper motion, stellar age and stellar distance) moderately follow the distribution, and some others (e.g., longitude, radius, and effective temperature) do not follow Benford's distribution. Further, some specific comments have been made on the possible generalizations of the obtained result, its potential applications in analyzing data-set of candidate exoplanets, and how interested readers can perform similar investigations on other interesting data-sets.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

Ancilla Assisted Quantum Information Processing: General protocols and NMR implementations

While a bit is the fundamental unit of binary classical information, a qubit is the fundamental unit of quantum information. In quantum information processing (QIP), it is customary to call the qubits under study as system qubits, and the additional qubits as ancillary qubits. In this thesis, I describe various schemes to exploit the ancillary qubits to efficiently perform many QIP tasks and their experimental demonstrations in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems. Particularly, we have showed that, in the presence of sufficient ancillary qubits, it is possible to completely characterize a general quantum state as well as a general quantum dynamics in a single measurement. In addition, it is also possible to exploit ancillary qubits for realizing noninvasive quantum measurements required for several experiments related to quantum physics. I will also illustrate some interesting applications of ancillary qubits in spectroscopy. At last, I describe an experimental study of the efficiency of various dynamical decoupling sequences for suppressing decoherence of single as well as multiple quantum coherences on large spin-clusters. The experiments reveal the superior performance of the recently introduced RUDD sequences in suppressing decoherence.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Ancilla assisted measurements on quantum ensembles: General protocols and applications in NMR quantum information processing

Quantum ensembles form easily accessible architectures for studying various phenomena in quantum physics, quantum information science, and spectroscopy. Here we review some recent protocols for measurements in quantum ensembles by utilizing ancillary systems. We also illustrate these protocols experimentally via nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. In particular, we shall review noninvasive measurements, extracting expectation values of various operators, characterizations of quantum states, and quantum processes, and finally quantum noise engineering.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Benford Analysis: A useful paradigm for spectroscopic analysis

Benford's law is a statistical inference to predict the frequency of significant digits in naturally occurring numerical databases. In such databases this law predicts a higher occurrence of the digit 1 in the most significant place and decreasing occurrences to other larger digits. Although counter-intuitive at first sight, Benford's law has seen applications in a wide variety of fields like physics, earth-science, biology, finance etc. In this work, we have explored the use of Benford's law for various spectroscopic applications. Although, we use NMR signals as our databases, the methods described here may also be extended to other spectroscopic techniques. In particular, with the help of Benford analysis, we demonstrate the detection of weak NMR signals and spectral corrections. We also explore a potential application of Benford analysis in the image-processing of MRI data.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2014

Benford distributions in NMR

Benford's Law is an empirical law which predicts the frequency of significant digits in databases corresponding to various phenomena, natural or artificial. Although counter intuitive at the first sight, it predicts a higher occurrence of digit 1, and decreasing occurrences to other larger digits. Here we report the Benford analysis of various NMR databases and draw several interesting inferences. We observe that, in general, NMR signals follow Benford distribution in time-domain as well as in frequency domain. Our survey included NMR signals of various nuclear species in a wide variety of molecules in different phases, namely liquid, liquid-crystalline, and solid. We also studied the dependence of Benford distribution on NMR parameters such as signal to noise ratio, number of scans, pulse angles, and apodization. In this process we also find that, under certain circumstances, the Benford analysis can distinguish a genuine spectrum from a visually identical simulated spectrum. Further we find that chemical-shift databases and amplitudes of certain radio frequency pulses generated using optimal control techniques also satisfy Benford's law to a good extent.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2014

Single-Shot Quantum Process Tomography

The standard procedure for quantum process tomography (QPT) involves applying the quantum process on a system initialized in each of a complete set of orthonormal states. The corresponding outputs are then characterized by quantum state tomography (QST), which itself requires the measurement of non-commuting observables realized by independent experiments on identically prepared system states. Thus QPT procedure demands a number of independent measurements, and moreover, this number increases rapidly with the size of the system. However, the total number of independent measurements can be greatly reduced with the availability of ancilla qubits. Ancilla assisted process tomography (AAPT) has earlier been shown to require a single QST of system-ancilla space. Ancilla assisted quantum state tomography (AAQST) has also been shown to perform QST in a single measurement. Here we combine AAPT with AAQST to realize a `single-shot QPT' (SSPT), a procedure to characterize a general quantum process in a single collective measurement of a set of commuting observables. We demonstrate experimental SSPT by characterizing several single-qubit processes using a three-qubit NMR quantum register. Furthermore, using the SSPT procedure we experimentally characterize the twirling process and compare the results with theory.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Estimating Franck-Condon factors using an NMR quantum processor

Interaction of molecules with light may lead to electronic transitions and simultaneous vibrational excitations. Franck-Condon factors (FCFs) play an important role in quantifying the intensities of such vibronic transitions occurring during molecular photo-excitations. In this article, we describe a general method for estimating FCFs using a quantum information processor. The method involves the application of a translation operator followed by the measurement of certain projections. We also illustrate the method by experimentally estimating FCFs with the help of a three-qubit NMR quantum information processor. We describe two methods for the measurement of projections - (i) using diagonal tomography and (ii) using Moussa protocol. The experimental results agree fairly well with the theory.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Inversion of moments to retrieve joint probabilities in quantum sequential measurements

A sequence of moments encode the corresponding probability distribution. Probing if quantum joint probability distribution can be retrieved from the associated set of moments -- realized in the sequential measurement of a dichotomic observable at different time intervals -- reveals a negative answer i.e., the joint probabilities of sequential measurements do not agree with the ones obtained by inverting the moments. This is indeed a reflection of the non-existence of a bonafide grand joint probability distribution, consistent with all the physical marginal probability distributions. Here we explicitly demonstrate that given the set of moments, it is not possible to retrieve the three-time quantum joint probability distribution resulting from quantum sequential measurement of a single qubit dichotomic observable at three different times. Experimental results using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system are reported here to corroborate these theoretical observations viz., the incompatibility of the three-time joint probabilties with those extracted from the moment sequence.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2013

Ancilla Assisted Quantum State Tomography in Many-Qubit Registers

The standard method of Quantum State Tomography (QST) relies on the measurement of a set of noncommuting observables, realized in a series of independent experiments. Ancilla Assisted QST (AAQST) proposed by Nieuwenhuizen and co-workers (Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 120402 (2004)) greatly reduces the number of independent measurements by exploiting an ancilla register in a known initial state. In suitable conditions AAQST allows mapping out density matrix of an input register in a single experiment. Here we describe methods for explicit construction of AAQST experiments in multi-qubit registers. We also report nuclear magnetic resonance studies on AAQST of (i) a two- qubit input register using a one-qubit ancilla in an isotropic liquid-state system and (ii) a three-qubit input register using a two-qubit ancilla register in a partially oriented system. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of AAQST in such many-qubit registers.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Violation of Entropic Leggett-Garg Inequality in Nuclear Spins

We report an experimental study of recently formulated entropic Leggett-Garg inequality (ELGI) by Usha Devi et al. (arXiv: 1208.4491v2 (2012)). This inequality places a bound on the statistical measurement outcomes of dynamical observables describing a macrorealistic system. Such a bound is not necessarily obeyed by quantum systems, and therefore provides an important way to distinguish quantumness from classical behavior. Here we study ELGI using a two-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. To perform the noninvasive measurements required for the ELGI study, we prepare the system qubit in a maximally mixed state as well as use the `ideal negative result measurement' procedure with the help of an ancilla qubit. The experimental results show a clear violation of ELGI by over four standard deviations. These results agree with the predictions of quantum theory. The violation of ELGI is attributed to the fact that certain joint probabilities are not legitimate in the quantum scenario, in the sense they do not reproduce all the marginal probabilities. Using a three-qubit system, we experimentally demonstrate that three-time joint probabilities do not reproduce certain two-time marginal probabilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Characterization of RF Inhomogeneity via NOON states

We describe a method for quantitative characterization of radio-frequency (RF) inhomogeneity using NOON states. NOON states are special multiple-quantum coherences which can be easily prepared in star-topology spin-systems. In this method we exploit the high sensitivity of the NOON states for z-rotations. As a result, Torrey oscillations with NOON states decay much faster than that of single quantum coherences. Therefore the present method requires shorter pulse durations, and enables the study of inhomogeneity at higher RF powers. To model such a inhomogeneity profile, we propose a two-parameter asymmetric Lorentzian function. The experiments are carried out in 1H channels of two different high-resolution NMR probes and the results are compared. Finally, we also extend the NOON state method to characterize the inhomogeneity correlations between two RF channels. We obtain the correlation profile between 1H and 31P channels of an NMR probe by constructing a five-parameter asymmetric-3D Lorentzian model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

NMR implementation of Quantum Delayed-Choice Experiment

We report the first experimental demonstration of quantum delayed-choice experiment via nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. An ensemble of molecules each with two spin-1/2 nuclei are used as target and the ancilla qubits to perform the quantum circuit corresponding the delayed-choice setup. As expected in theory, our experiments clearly demonstrate the continuous morphing of the target qubit between particle-like and wave-like behaviors. The experimental visibility of the interference patterns shows good agreement with the theory.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Dynamical Decoupling of Spin-Clusters using Solid State NMR

In this work we experimentally study the efficiency of various dynamical decoupling sequences for suppressing decoherence of single as well as multiple quantum coherences on large spin-clusters. The system involves crystallites of a powdered sample containing a large number of molecular protons interacting via long-range dipole-dipole interaction. The multiple quantum coherences are prepared by progressively creating correlations in the spin lattice using standard pulse sequences implementing two-quantum average Hamiltonian. The spin system is then subjected to various dynamical decoupling sequences, followed by conversion into observable single quantum coherence by using time-reversal sequence. The experiments reveal superior performance of the recently introduced RUDD sequences in suppressing the decoherence.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Measurement of Translational Diffusion Constant using Noon State

A method for measuring translational diffusion constant in liquids via NOON state is described using a quantum circuit and is experimentally demonstrated using a model system. When compared with the standard single quantum method, the NOON state method requirs shorter diffusion delays and weaker gradients. These improvements depend on the on the size of the NOON state. Due to the high sensitivity of the NOON state for the changes in the local magnetic fields, this method enables studying slow diffusion and studying diffusion with limited strengths of pulsed-field-gradients.

quant-ph↗