arXiv subjects

Dong E. Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Dong E. Liu.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Keldysh Nonlinear Sigma Model for a Free-Fermion Gas under Continuous Measurements

Quantum entanglement phase transitions have provided new insights to quantum many-body dynamics. Both disorders and measurements are found to induce similar entanglement transitions. Here, we provide a theoretical framework that unifies these two seemingly disparate concepts and discloses their internal connections. Specifically, we analytically analyze a $d$-dimension free-fermion gas subject to continuous projective measurements. By mapping the Lindblad master equation to the functional Keldysh field theory, we develop an effective theory termed as the time-local Keldysh nonlinear sigma model, which enables us to analytically describe the physics of the monitored system. Our effective theory resembles to that used to describe the disordered fermionic systems. As an application of the effective theory, we study the transport property and obtain a Drude-form conductivity where the elastic scattering time is replaced by the inverse measurement strength. According to these similarities, two different concepts, measurements and disorders, are unified in the same theoretical framework. A numerical verification of our theory and predictions is also provided.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Theoretical proposal to obtain strong Majorana evidence from scanning tunneling spectroscopy of a vortex with a dissipative environment

It is predicted that a vortex in a topological superconductor contains a Majorana zero mode (MZM). The confirmative Majorana signature, i.e., the $2e^2/h$ quantized conductance, however is easily sabotaged by unavoidable interruptions, e.g. instrument broadening, non-Majorana signal, and extra particle channels. We propose to avoid the signal interruption by introducing disorder-induced dissipation that couples to the tip-sample tunneling. With dissipation involved, we highlight three features, each of which alone can provide a strong evidence to identify MZM. Firstly, dissipation suppresses a finite-energy Caroli-de Gennes-Matricon (CdGM) conductance peak into a valley, while it does not split MZM zero-bias conductance peak. Secondly, we predict a dissipation-dependent scaling feature of the zero-bias conductance peak. Thirdly, the introduced dissipation manifests the MZM signal by suppressing non-topological CdGM modes. Importantly, the observation of these features does not require a quantized conductance value $2e^2/h$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Noise-resilient phase estimation with randomized compiling

We develop an error mitigation method for the control-free phase estimation. We prove a theorem that under the first-order correction, the noise channels with only Hermitian Kraus operators do not change the phases of a unitary operator, and therefore, the benign types of noise for phase estimation are identified. By using the randomized compiling protocol, we can convert the generic noise in the phase estimation circuits into stochastic Pauli noise, which satisfies the condition of our theorem. Thus we achieve a noise-resilient phase estimation without any quantum resource overhead. The simulated experiments show that our method can significantly reduce the estimation error of the phases by up to two orders of magnitude. Our method paves the way for the utilization of quantum phase estimation before the advent of fault-tolerant quantum computers.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Conductance Quantization in PbTe Nanowires

PbTe nanowires coupled to a superconductor have recently been proposed as a potential Majorana platform. The hallmark of the one-dimensional nature of ballistic nanowires is their quantized conductance. Here, we report the observation of conductance plateaus at multiples of the quantized value $2e^2/h$ in PbTe nanowires at finite magnetic fields. The quantized plateaus, as a function of source-drain bias and magnetic field, allow for the extraction of the Landé $g$-factor, sub-band spacing and effective mass. The coefficient of 2 in the plateau conductance indicates the presence of valley degeneracy arising from the crystal orientation of the nanowires, which are grown on a (001) substrate. Occasionally, this degeneracy can be lifted by a gate voltage that breaks the mirror symmetry. Our results demonstrate the one-dimensionality of PbTe nanowires and fulfill one of the necessary conditions for the realization of Majorana zero modes.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Electrostatic effects of the MnBi2Te4-superconductor hetero-structures in chiral Majorana search

The realization of chiral Majorana modes is a challenging task. We aim to comprehend the phase diagrams and parameter control capabilities of the actual devices used in the chiral Majorana search. Beyond the well-known minimal models, we develop a numerical simulation scheme using a self-consistent Schrodinger-Poisson approach to study, as an example, the MnBi2Te4 thin film coupled to an s-wave superconductor. We show that both the superconducting proximity effect and the tunability of the chemical potential for the topological surface states are significantly influenced by the gate-induced electrostatic potential. This complicates the implementation in experiments, and the actual topological region will be narrowed in stark contrast to those predicted in the previous minimal models. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that the chiral Majorana mode still exists in a wide range of experimental parameters with practical tunability.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Recent progress on Majorana in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures--Engineering and detection

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) are exotic excitations (in condensed matter systems) that have potential applications in topological quantum computation. Though MZMs have been predicted on many platforms, their existence of them is still under debate. In this paper, we review the recent progress of engineering and detecting MZMs in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. We also briefly review the protocols of implementing topological quantum computation by hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowires.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Meissner effect induced Majorana zero modes at small magnetic field

One fundamental difficulty in realizing Majorana zero modes (MZMs) is the required high magnetic field, which causes serious issues, e.g., shrinks the superconducting gap, reduces topological region, and weakens their robustness against disorder. In this work, we propose that the Meissner effect can bring the topological superconducting phase to a superconductor/topological-insulator/superconductor (SC/TI/SC) hybrid system. Remarkably, the required magnetic field strength ($<$10 mT) to support MZMs has been reduced by several orders of magnitude compared to that ($>$0.5 T) in the previous schemes. Tuning the phase difference between the top and bottom superconductors can control the number and position of the MZMs. In addition, we account for the electrostatic potential in the superconductor/topological-insulator (SC/TI) interface through the self-consistent Schrödinger-Poisson calculation, which shows the experimental accessibility of our proposal. Our proposal only needs a small magnetic eld of less than 10 mT and is robust against the chemical potential fluctuation, which makes SC/TI/SC hybrid an ideal Majorana platform.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Properties of dissipative Floquet Majorana modes using a quantum dot

We study the electronic conductance of dissipative Floquet Majorana zero modes (FMZMs) in a periodically driven nanowire coupled to a quantum dot. We use a numerical method which can accurately take into account the dissipation effects from the superconducting bath, which causes the FMZMs to have a finite lifetime. Our results show that, in the weak nanowire-dot coupling regime, the peak conductance at zero temperature of the resonant dot can be well approximated by a universal function of the FMZM lifetime rescaled with the nanowire-dot coupling strength: For a long FMZM's lifetime, the conductance approaches the characteristic quantized value of $G = e^2/2h$, whereas $G \rightarrow e^2/h$ (uncoupled dot) as the FMZMs' lifetime goes to zero. In principle, our method can be used to test the presence and lifetime of FMZMs in such devices, which is key for any practical application of these topological states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Plateau regions for zero-bias peaks within 5% of the quantized conductance value $2e^2/h$

Probing an isolated Majorana zero mode is predicted to reveal a tunneling conductance quantized at $2e^2/h$ at zero temperature. Experimentally, a zero-bias peak (ZBP) is expected and its height should remain robust against relevant parameter tuning, forming a quantized plateau. Here, we report the observation of large ZBPs in a thin InAs-Al hybrid nanowire device. The ZBP height can stick close to $2e^2/h$, mostly within $5\%$ tolerance, by sweeping gate voltages and magnetic field. We further map out the phase diagram and identify two plateau regions in the phase space. Despite the presence of disorder and quantum dots, our result constitutes a step forward towards establishing Majorana zero modes.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Probing electron-hole weights of an Andreev bound state by transient currents

Andreev bound states (ABSs) are localized quantum states that contain both electron and hole components. They ubiquitously reside in inhomogeneous superconducting systems. Following theoretical analysis, we propose to probe the electron-hole weights of an ABS via a local tunneling measurement that detects the transient current under a steplike pulse bias. With our protocol, the ABS energy level can also be obtained from peaks of the Fourier spectrum of the transient current. Our protocol can be applied to detect robust zero-energy Majorana bound states (MBSs), which have equal electron-hole weights, in candidate platforms where local tunneling spectroscopy measurement is possible. In the 1D Majorana nanowire model, we numerically calculate the electron-hole weights for different types of low-energy bound states, including ABSs, quasi-MBSs, and MBSs.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Fast Quantum Calibration using Bayesian Optimization with State Parameter Estimator for Non-Markovian Environment

As quantum systems expand in size and complexity, manual qubit characterization and gate optimization will be a non-scalable and time-consuming venture. Physical qubits have to be carefully calibrated because quantum processors are very sensitive to the external environment, with control hardware parameters slowly drifting during operation, affecting gate fidelity. Currently, existing calibration techniques require complex and lengthy measurements to independently control the different parameters of each gate and are unscalable to large quantum systems. Therefore, fully automated protocols with the desired functionalities are required to speed up the calibration process. This paper aims to propose single-qubit calibration of superconducting qubits under continuous weak measurements from a real physical experimental settings point of view. We propose a real-time optimal estimator of qubit states, which utilizes weak measurements and Bayesian optimization to find the optimal control pulses for gate design. Our numerical results demonstrate a significant reduction in the calibration process, obtaining a high gate fidelity. Using the proposed estimator we estimated the qubit state with and without measurement noise and the estimation error between the qubit state and the estimator state is less than 0.02. With this setup, we drive an approximated pi pulse with final fidelity of 0.9928. This shows that our proposed strategy is robust against the presence of measurement and environmental noise and can also be applicable for the calibration of many other quantum computation technologies.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Numerical study of PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowires for engineering Majorana zero modes

Epitaxial semiconductor-superconductor (SM-SC) hybrid nanowires are potential candidates for implementing Majorana qubits. Recent experimental and theoretical works show that charged impurities in SM remain a major problem in all existing hybrid nanowires, in which the SM is either InAs or InSb while the SC is mainly Al. Here, we theoretically validate the recently proposed PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowire as a potential candidate for Majorana devices. By studying the electrostatic and electronic properties of PbTe nanowires, we demonstrate that the huge dielectric constant of PbTe endows itself a high tolerance of charged impurity, which is a potential advantage over InAs and InSb nanowires. Moreover, we find that the effective axial Landé $g$ factor and Rashba spin-orbit coupling strength of PbTe nanowires are comparable to those of InAs nanowires. The conceivable merits of using Pb as the SC are (i) Pb has a larger superconducting gap, higher critical temperature, and higher parallel critical magnetic field than those of Al; (ii) a superconducting gap comparable with those of InAs-Al and InSb-Al can be induced in PbTe-Pb even by a weak coupling between Pb and PbTe, which simultaneously relieves the adverse renormalization and induced disorder effects on SM from SC; and (iii) Pb film can be grown on PbTe with a thin buffer CdTe layer in between, solving the lattice mismatch problem as an important source of disorder. In the presence of a parallel magnetic field, we show that the typical BdG energy spectrum and tunneling spectroscopy of PbTe-Pb resemble those of InAs and InSb based hybrid nanowires exposed to a tilting magnetic field, as a result of the highly anisotropic Landé $g$ factors of PbTe nanowires. The calculated topological phase diagrams of PbTe-Pb indicate that the multivalley character of PbTe makes it easier than InAs and InSb to access topological superconducting phases.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Effect of quantum error correction on detection-induced coherent errors

We study the performance of quantum error correction codes (QECCs) under the detection-induced coherent error due to the imperfectness of practical implementations of stabilizer measurements, after running a quantum circuit. Considering the most promising surface code, we find that the detection-induced coherent error will result in undetected error terms, which will accumulate and evolve into logical errors. However, we show that such errors will be alleviated by increasing the code size, akin to eliminating other types of errors discussed previously. We also find that with detection-induced coherent errors, the exact surface code becomes an approximate QECC.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Large Andreev bound state zero bias peaks in a weakly dissipative environment

We study Andreev bound states in hybrid InAs-Al nanowire devices. The energy of these states can be tuned to zero by gate voltage or magnetic field, revealing large zero bias peaks (ZBPs) near 2e^2/h in tunneling conductance. Probing these large ZBPs using a weakly dissipative lead reveals non-Fermi liquid temperature (T) dependence due to environmental Coulomb blockade (ECB), an interaction effect from the lead acting on the nanowire junction. By increasing T, these large ZBPs either show a height increase or a transition from split peaks to a ZBP, both deviate significantly from non-dissipative devices where a Fermi-liquid T dependence is revealed. Our result demonstrates the competing effect between ECB and thermal broadening on Andreev bound states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Double Fu-teleportation and anomalous Coulomb blockade in a Majorana-hosted superconducting island

We study the temperature dependence of Coulomb Blockade peak conductance based on a Majorana-hosted superconducting island. In the low-temperature regime, we discover a coherent double Fu-teleportation (FT) process, where any independent tunneling process always involves two coherent FTs; and we also find an anomalous universal scaling behavior, which shows a transition from a [max(T,eV)]^6 to a [max(T,eV)]^3 conductance behavior as increasing energy scale. In the high-temperature regime, using the familiar rate equation method, we find that the conductance is proportional to the reciprocal of the temperature and shows a non-monotonic temperature-dependence. Both the anomalous power-law behavior and non-monotonic temperature-dependence can be distinguished from the conductance peak in the traditional Coulomb block, and therefore, serve as a hallmark for the non-local transport in the topological superconducting island.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Quantum circuit architecture search on a superconducting processor

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have shown strong evidences to gain provable computational advantages for diverse fields such as finance, machine learning, and chemistry. However, the heuristic ansatz exploited in modern VQAs is incapable of balancing the tradeoff between expressivity and trainability, which may lead to the degraded performance when executed on the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) machines. To address this issue, here we demonstrate the first proof-of-principle experiment of applying an efficient automatic ansatz design technique, i.e., quantum architecture search (QAS), to enhance VQAs on an 8-qubit superconducting quantum processor. In particular, we apply QAS to tailor the hardware-efficient ansatz towards classification tasks. Compared with the heuristic ansatze, the ansatz designed by QAS improves test accuracy from 31% to 98%. We further explain this superior performance by visualizing the loss landscape and analyzing effective parameters of all ansatze. Our work provides concrete guidance for developing variable ansatze to tackle various large-scale quantum learning problems with advantages.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Efficient Classical Computation of Quantum Mean Values for Shallow QAOA Circuits

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), which is a variational quantum algorithm, aims to give sub-optimal solutions of combinatorial optimization problems. It is widely believed that QAOA has the potential to demonstrate application-level quantum advantages in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum(NISQ) processors with shallow circuit depth. Since the core of QAOA is the computation of expectation values of the problem Hamiltonian, an important practical question is whether we can find an efficient classical algorithm to solve quantum mean value in the case of general shallow quantum circuits. Here, we present a novel graph decomposition based classical algorithm that scales linearly with the number of qubits for the shallow QAOA circuits in most optimization problems except for complete graph case. Numerical tests in Max-cut, graph coloring and Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model problems, compared to the state-of-the-art method, shows orders of magnitude performance improvement. Our results are not only important for the exploration of quantum advantages with QAOA, but also useful for the benchmarking of NISQ processors.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

An analytic study of the independent coherent errors in the surface code

The realistic coherent errors could induce very different behaviors compared with their stochastic counterparts in the quantum error correction (QEC) and fault tolerant quantum computation. Their impacts are believed to be very subtle, more detrimental and hard to analyze compared to those ideal stochastic errors. In this paper, we study the independent coherent error due to the imperfect unitary rotation on each physical qubit of the toric code. We find that the surface code under coherent error satisfies generalized Knill-Laflamme (K-L) criterion and falls into the category of approximate QEC. The extra term in the generalized K-L criterion corresponds to the coherent part of the error channel at logical level, and then show that the generalized K-L criterion approaches the normal K-L criterion when the code distance becomes large. In addition, we also find that if the code with a fixed distance d is $ε$-correctable, the value of $ε$ describing the accuracy of the approximate QEC cannot be smaller than a lower bound. We then study the success probability of QEC under such coherent errors, and confirm that the exact success probability under coherent error is smaller than the results using Pauli twirling approximation at physical level.

quant-ph↗