arXiv subjects

Daniel Braun

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Braun.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

Distribution of Interference in the Presence of Decoherence

We study the statistics of quantum interference for completely positive maps. We calculate analytically the mean interference and its second moment for finite dimensional quantum systems interacting with a simple environment consisting of one or several spins (qudits). The joint propagation of the entire system is taken as unitary with an evolution operator drawn from the Circular Unitary Ensemble (CUE). We show that the mean interference decays with a power law as function of the dimension of the Hilbert space of the environment, with a power that depends on the temperature of the environment.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2009

Decoherence-enhanced measurements

Quantum-enhanced measurements use highly non-classical quantum states in order to enhance the precision of the measurement of classical quantities, like the length of an optical cavity. The major goal is to beat the standard quantum limit (SQL), i.e. a precision of order $1/\sqrt{N}$, where $N$ is the number of quantum resources (e.g. the number of photons or atoms used), and to achieve a scaling $1/N$, known as the Heisenberg limit. Doing so would have tremendous impact in many areas, but so far only three experiments have demonstrated a slight improvement over the SQL. The required quantum states are generally difficult to produce, and very prone to decoherence. Here we show that decoherence itself may be used as an extremely sensitive probe of system properties. This should allow for a new measurement principle with the potential to achieve the Heisenberg limit without the need to produce highly entangled states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Comment on "Regional Versus Global Entanglement in Resonating-Valence-Bond States"

In a recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 170502 (2007); quant-ph/0703227], Chandran and coworkers study the entanglement properties of valence bond (VB) states. Their main result is that VB states do not contain (or only an insignificant amount of) two-site entanglement, whereas they possess multi-body entanglement. Two examples ("RVB gas and liquid") are given to illustrate this claim, which essentially comes from a lower bound derived for spin correlators in VB states. We show in this Comment that (i) for the "RVB liquid" on the square lattice, the calculations and conclusions of Chandran et al. are incorrect. (ii) A simple analytical calculation gives the exact value of the correlator for the "RVB gas", showing that the bound found by Chandran et al. is tight. (iii) The lower bound for spin correlators in VB states is equivalent to a celebrated result of Anderson dating from more than 50 years ago.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Hardy's Test versus the CHSH Test of Quantum Non-Locality: Fundamental and Practical Aspects

We compare two different tests of quantum non-locality, both in theoretical terms and with respect to a possible implementation in a mesoscopic circuit: Hardy's test [Hardy, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{68}, 2981 (1992)] and the CHSH test, the latter including a recently discovered inequality relevant for experiments with three possible outcomes [Collins and Gisin, J. Phys. A \textbf{37}, 1775 (2004)]. We clarify the geometry of the correlations defined by Hardy's equations with respect to the polytope of causal correlations, and show that these equations generalize to the CHSH inequality if the slightest imperfections in the setup need to be taken into account. We propose a mesoscopic circuit consisting of two interacting Mach-Zehnder interferometers in a Hall bar system for which both Hardy's test and the CHSH test can be realized with a simple change of gate voltages, and evaluate the robustness of the two tests in the case of fluctuating experimental parameters. The proposed setup is remarkably robust and should work for fluctuations of beam splitter angles or phases up to the order of one radian, or single particle loss rates up to about 15%.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Quantum Cloning without Interference

We study the role of interference in the process of quantum cloning. We show that in order to achieve better than classical cloning of a qubit no interference is needed. In particular, a large class of symmetric universal 1$\to$ 2 qubit cloners exists which achieve the optimal average fidelity 5/6 for such machines, without using any interference. We also obtain optimal average fidelities for interference--free cloning in asymmetric situations, and discuss the relation of the quantum cloners found to the Bužek--Hillery quantum cloner.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Efficiency of Producing Random Unitary Matrices with Quantum Circuits

We study the scaling of the convergence of several statistical properties of a recently introduced random unitary circuit ensemble towards their limits given by the circular unitary ensemble (CUE). Our study includes the full distribution of the absolute square of a matrix element, moments of that distribution up to order eight, as well as correlators containing up to 16 matrix elements in a given column of the unitary matrices. Our numerical scaling analysis shows that all of these quantities can be reproduced efficiently, with a number of random gates which scales at most as $n_q\log (n_q/ε)$ with the number of qubits $n_q$ for a given fixed precision $ε$. This suggests that quantities which require an exponentially large number of gates are of more complex nature.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Classicality of spin states

We extend the concept of classicality in quantum optics to spin states. We call a state ``classical'' if its density matrix can be decomposed as a weighted sum of angular momentum coherent states with positive weights. Classical spin states form a convex set C, which we fully characterize for a spin-1/2 and a spin-1. For arbitrary spin, we provide ``non-classicality witnesses''. For bipartite systems, C forms a subset of all separable states. A state of two spins-1/2 belongs to C if and only if it is separable, whereas for a spin-1/2 coupled to a spin-1, there are separable states which do not belong to C. We show that in general the question whether a state is in C can be answered by a linear programming algorithm.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Coherent control of atomic tunneling

We study the tunneling of a two-level atom in a double well potential while the atom is coupled to a single electromagnetic field mode of a cavity. The coupling between internal and external degrees of freedom, due to the mechanical effect on the atom from photon emission into the cavity mode, can dramatically change the tunneling behavior. We predict that in general the tunneling process becomes quasiperiodic. In a certain regime of parameters a collapse and revival of the tunneling occurs. Accessing the internal degrees of freedom of the atom with a laser allows to coherently manipulate the atom position, and in particular to prepare the atom in one of the two wells. The effects described should be observable with atoms in an optical double well trap.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Interference versus success probability in quantum algorithms with imperfections

We study the influence of errors and decoherence on both the performance of Shor's factoring algorithm and Grover's search algorithm, and on the amount of interference in these algorithms using a recently proposed interference measure. We consider systematic unitary errors, random unitary errors, and decoherence processes. We show that unitary errors which destroy the interference destroy the efficiency of the algorithm, too. However, unitary errors may also create useless additional interference. In such a case the total amount of interference can increase, while the efficiency of the quantum computation decreases. For decoherence due to phase flip errors, interference is destroyed for small error probabilities, and converted into destructive interference for error probabilities approaching one, leading to success probabilities which can even drop below the classical value. Our results show that in general interference is necessary in order for a quantum algorithm to outperform classical computation, but large amounts of interference are not sufficient and can even lead to destructive interference with worse than classical success rates.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Spontaneous emission from a two--level atom tunneling in a double--well potential

We study a two-level atom in a double--well potential coupled to a continuum of electromagnetic modes (black body radiation in three dimensions at zero absolute temperature). Internal and external degrees of the atom couple due to recoil during emission of a photon. We provide a full analysis of the problem in the long wavelengths limit up to the border of the Lamb-Dicke regime, including a study of the internal dynamics of the atom (spontaneous emission), the tunneling motion, and the electric field of the emitted photon. The tunneling process itself may or may not decohere depending on the wavelength corresponding to the internal transition compared to the distance between the two wells of the external potential, as well as on the spontaneous emission rate compared to the tunneling frequency. Interference fringes appear in the emitted light from a tunneling atom, or an atom in a stationary coherent superposition of its center--of--mass motion, if the wavelength is comparable to the well separation, but only if the external state of the atom is post-selected.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Role of interference in quantum state transfer through spin chains

We examine the role that interference plays in quantum state transfer through several types of finite spin chains, including chains with isotropic Heisenberg interaction between nearest neighbors, chains with reduced coupling constants to the spins at the end of the chain, and chains with anisotropic coupling constants. We evaluate quantitatively both the interference corresponding to the propagation of the entire chain, and the interference in the effective propagation of the first and last spins only, treating the rest of the chain as black box. We show that perfect quantum state transfer is possible without quantum interference, and provide evidence that the spin chains examined realize interference-free quantum state transfer to a good approximation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Exact Activation Energy of Magnetic Single Domain Particles

I present the exact analytical expression for the activation energy as a function of externally applied magnetic fields for a single--domain magnetic particle with uniaxial anisotropy (Stoner--Wohlfahrt model), and investigate the scaling behavior of the activation energy close to the switching boundary.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2006

Distribution of interference in random quantum algorithms

We study the amount of interference in random quantum algorithms using a recently derived quantitative measure of interference. To this end we introduce two random circuit ensembles composed of random sequences of quantum gates from a universal set, mimicking quantum algorithms in the quantum circuit representation. We show numerically that these ensembles converge to the well--known circular unitary ensemble (CUE) for general complex quantum algorithms, and to the Haar orthogonal ensemble (HOE) for real quantum algorithms. We provide exact analytical formulas for the average and typical interference in the circular ensembles, and show that for sufficiently large numbers of qubits a random quantum algorithm uses with probability close to one an amount of interference approximately equal to the dimension of the Hilbert space. As a by-product, we offer a new way of efficiently constructing random operators from the Haar measures of CUE or HOE in a high dimensional Hilbert space using universal sets of quantum gates.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2006

Decoherence in a system of many two--level atoms

I show that the decoherence in a system of $N$ degenerate two--level atoms interacting with a bosonic heat bath is for any number of atoms $N$ governed by a generalized Hamming distance (called ``decoherence metric'') between the superposed quantum states, with a time--dependent metric tensor that is specific for the heat bath.The decoherence metric allows for the complete characterization of the decoherence of all possible superpositions of many-particle states, and can be applied to minimize the over-all decoherence in a quantum memory. For qubits which are far apart, the decoherence is given by a function describing single-qubit decoherence times the standard Hamming distance. I apply the theory to cold atoms in an optical lattice interacting with black body radiation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2006

Invariant integration over the orthogonal group

I adapt a recently introduced method for integrating over the unitary group (S. Aubert and C.S. Lam, J.Math.Phys. 44, 6112-6131 (2003)) to the orthogonal group. I derive explicit formulas for a number of one, two and three-vector integrals, as well as recursion formulas for more complicated cases.

math-ph↗

arXiv2006

Indirect decoherence in optical lattices and cold gases

The interaction of two--level atoms with a common heat bath leads to an effective interaction between the atoms, such that with time the internal degrees of the atoms become correlated or even entangled. If part of the atoms remain unobserved this creates additional indirect decoherence for the selected atoms, on top of the direct decoherence due to the interaction with the heat bath. I show that indirect decoherence can drastically increase and even dominate the decoherence for sufficiently large times. I investigate indirect decoherence through thermal black body radiation quantitatively for atoms trapped at regular positions in an optical lattice as well as for atoms at random positions in a cold gas, and show how indirect coherence can be controlled or even suppressed through experimentally accessible parameters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

A Quantitative Measure of Interference

We introduce an interference measure which allows to quantify the amount of interference present in any physical process that maps an initial density matrix to a final density matrix. In particular, the interference measure enables one to monitor the amount of interference generated in each step of a quantum algorithm. We show that a Hadamard gate acting on a single qubit is a basic building block for interference generation and realizes one bit of interference, an ``i-bit''. We use the interference measure to quantify interference for various examples, including Grover's search algorithm and Shor's factorization algorithm. We distinguish between ``potentially available'' and ``actually used'' interference, and show that for both algorithms the potentially available interference is exponentially large. However, the amount of interference actually used in Grover's algorithm is only about 3 i-bits and asymptotically independent of the number of qubits, while Shor's algorithm indeed uses an exponential amount of interference.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Entanglement from thermal black body radiation

Two non--interacting quantum systems which couple to a common environment with many degrees of freedom initially in thermal equilibrium can become entangled due to the indirect interaction mediated through this heat bath. I examine here the dynamics of reservoir induced entanglement for a heat bath consisting of a thermal electro--magnetic radiation field, such as black body radiation or the cosmic microwave background, and show how the effect can be understood as result of an effective induced interaction.

quant-ph↗