arXiv subjects

Elisabetta Paladino

Publications and source records attributed to Elisabetta Paladino.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Noise Classification in Three-Level Quantum Networks by Machine Learning

We investigate a machine learning based classification of noise acting on a small quantum network with the aim of detecting spatial or multilevel correlations, and the interplay with Markovianity. We control a three-level system by inducing coherent population transfer exploiting different pulse amplitude combinations as inputs to train a feedforward neural network. We show that supervised learning can classify different types of classical dephasing noise affecting the system. Three non-Markovian (quasi-static correlated, anti-correlated and uncorrelated) and Markovian noises are classified with more than $99\%$ accuracy. On the contrary, correlations of Markovian noise cannot be discriminated with our method. Our approach is robust to statistical measurement errors and retains its effectiveness for physical measurements where only a limited number of samples is available making it very experimental-friendly. Our result paves the way for classifying spatial correlations of noise in quantum architectures.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Women for Quantum -- Manifesto of Values

Data show that the presence of women in quantum science is affected by a number of detriments and their percentage decreases even further for higher positions. Beyond data, from our shared personal experiences as female tenured quantum physics professors, we believe that the current model of scientific leadership, funding, and authority fails to represent many of us. It is time for a real change that calls for a different kind of force and for the participation of everyone. Women for quantum calls for a joint effort and aims with this initiative to contribute to such a transformation.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Detecting virtual photons in ultrastrongly coupled superconducting quantum circuits

Light-matter interaction and understanding the fundamental physics behind is essential for emerging quantum technologies. Solid-state devices may explore new regimes where coupling strengths are "ultrastrong", i.e., comparable to the energies of the subsystems. New exotic phenomena occur the common root of many of them being the fact that the entangled vacuum contains virtual photons. They herald the lack of conservation of the number of excitations which is the witness of ultrastrong coupling breaking the U(1) symmetry. Despite more than a decade of research, the detection of ground-state virtual photons still awaits demonstration. In this work, we recognize the "conspiring" set of experimental challenges and show how to overcome them, thus providing a solution to this long-standing problem. We find that combining a superinductor-based unconventional "light fluxonium" qudit and coherent control yields a highly efficient, faithful, and selective conversion of virtual photons into real ones. This enables their detection with resources available to present-day quantum technologies.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Integrated conversion and photodetection of virtual photons in an ultrastrongly coupled superconducting quantum circuit

The ground-state of an artificial atom ultrastrongly coupled to quantized modes is entangled and contains an arbitrary number of virtual photons. The problem of their detection has been raised since the very birth of the field but despite the theoretical efforts still awaits experimental demonstration. Recently experimental problems have been addressed in detail showing that they can be overcome by combining an unconventional design of the artificial atom with advanced coherent control. In this work we study a simple scheme of control-integrated continuous measurement which makes remarkably favourable the tradeoff between measurement efficiency and backaction showing that the unambiguous detection of virtual photons can be achieved within state-of-the art quantum technologies.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

1/f noise in quantum nanoscience

Fundamental issues of 1/f noise in quantum nanoscience are reviewed starting from basic statistical noise processes. Fundamental noise models based on two-level systems (TLS) are described. We emphasize the importance of TLSs in materials parameter fluctuations, such as dielectric constant. The present understanding of 1/f noise in superconducting quantum interferometers and in single electron devices is summarized. For coherent quantum nanoscience, we introduce superconducting qubits and the relation between decoherence and 1/f noise using the filter function formulation. We also clarify the qubit noise spectroscopy and emphasize the importance of materials with reduced 1/f noise for future quantum coherent nanodevices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Open-loop quantum control of small-size networks for high-order cumulants and cross-correlations sensing

Quantum control techniques represent one of the most efficient tools to attain high-fidelity quantum operations and a convenient approach for quantum sensing and quantum noise spectroscopy. In this work, we investigate dynamical decoupling while processing an entangling two-qubit gate based on an Ising-xx interaction, each qubit being affected by pure dephasing classical correlated 1/ f -noises. To evaluate the gate error, we used the Magnus expansion introducing generalized filter functions that describe decoupling while processing and allow us to derive an approximate analytic expression as a hierarchy of nested integrals of noise cumulants. The error is separated in contributions of Gaussian and non-Gaussian noise, the corresponding generalized filter functions being calculated up to the fourth order. By exploiting the properties of selected pulse sequences, we show that it is possible to extract the second-order statistics (spectrum and cross-spectrum) and to highlight non-Gaussian features contained in the fourth-order cumulant. We discuss the applicability of these results to state-of-the-art small networks based on solid-state platforms.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2023

Second spectrum of charge carrier density fluctuations in graphene due to trapping/detrapping processes

We investigate the second spectrum of charge carrier density fluctuations in graphene within the McWorther model, where noise is induced by electron traps in the substrate. Within this simple picture, we obtain a closed-form expression including both Gaussian and non-Gaussian fluctuations. We show that a very extended distribution of switching rates of the electron traps in the substrate leads to a carrier density power spectrum with a non-trivial structure on the scale of the measurement bandwidth. This explains the appearance of a $1/f$ component in the Gaussian part of the second spectrum, which adds up to the expected frequency-independent term. Finally, we find that the non-Gaussian part of the second spectrum can become quantitatively relevant by approaching extremely low temperatures.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Fluctuations and stability of a fast driven Otto cycle

We investigate the stochastic dynamics of a thermal machine realized by a fast-driven Otto cycle. By employing a stochastic approach, we find that system coherences strongly affect fluctuations depending on the thermodynamic current. Specifically, we observe an increment in the system instabilities when considering the heat exchanged with the cold bath. On the contrary, the cycle precision improves when the system couples with the hot bath, where thermodynamic fluctuations reduce below the classical Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation bound. Violation of the classical bound holds even when a dephasing source couples with the system. We also find that coherence suppression not only restores the cycle cooling but also enhances the convergence of fluctuation relations by increasing the entropy production of the reversed process. An additional analysis unveiled that the stochastic sampling required to ensure good statistics increases for the cooling cycle while downsizes for the other protocols. Despite the simplicity of our model, our results provide further insight into thermodynamic relations at the stochastic level.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Coarse-grained effective Hamiltonian via the Magnus Expansion for a three-level system

Quantum state processing is one of the main tools of quantum technologies. While real systems are complicated and/or may be driven by non-ideal control they may nevertheless exhibit simple dynamics approximately confined to a low-energy Hilbert subspace. Adiabatic elimination is the simplest approximation scheme allowing us to derive in certain cases an effective Hamiltonian operating in a low-dimensional Hilbert subspace. However, these approximations may present ambiguities and difficulties hindering a systematic improvement of their accuracy in larger and larger systems. Here we use the Magnus expansion as a systematic tool to derive ambiguity-free effective Hamiltonians. We show that the validity of the approximations ultimately leverages only on a properly done coarse-graining in time of the exact dynamics. We validate the accuracy of the obtained effective Hamiltonians with suitably tailored fidelities of quantum operations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Effect of dilute impurities on short graphene Josephson junctions

We study the effect of a dilute homogeneous spatial distribution of non-magnetic impurities on the equilibrium supercurrent sustained by a ballistic graphene Josephson junction in the short junction limit. Within the Dirac-Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach and modeling impurities by the Anderson model we derive the supercurrent and its equilibrium power spectrum. We find a modification of the current-phase relation with a reduction of the skewness induced by disorder, and a nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the critical current. The potentialities of the supercurrent power spectrum for accurate spectroscopy of the hybridized Andreev bound states-impurities spectrum are highlighted. In the low temperature limit, the supercurrent zero frequency thermal noise directly probes the spectral function at the Fermi energy.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

A Tutorial on Optimal Control and Reinforcement Learning methods for Quantum Technologies

Quantum Optimal Control is an established field of research which is necessary for the development of Quantum Technologies. In recent years, Machine Learning techniques have been proved usefull to tackle a variety of quantum problems. In particular, Reinforcement Learning has been employed to address typical problems of control of quantum systems. In this tutorial we introduce the methods of Quantum Optimal Control and Reinforcement Learning by applying them to the problem of three-level population transfer. The jupyter notebooks to reproduce some of our results are open-sourced and available on github.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Optimized state transfer in systems of ultrastrongly coupled matter and radiation

Ultrastrong coupling may allow faster operations for the development of quantum technologies at the expenses of increased sensitivity to new kind of intrinsic errors. We study state transfer in superconducting circuit QED architectures in the ultrastrong coupling regime. Using optimal control methods we find a protocol resilient to the main source of errors, coming from the interplay of the dynamical Casimir effect with cavity losses.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Coarse-grained dynamics of ac-driven two-state systems

Magnus expansion is used to identify effective Hamiltonians describing the coarse-grained dynamics of more complex problems. Here, we apply this method to a two-level system driven by an and AC field. We derive Stark and Bloch-Siegert shifs of both diagonal and off-diagonal entries of the Hamiltonian as a result of coarse-graining only.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Heat rectification through single and coupled quantum dots

We study heat rectification through quantum dots in the Coulomb blockade regime using a master equation approach. We consider both cases of two-terminal and four-terminal devices. In the two-terminal configuration, we analyze the case of a single quantum dot with either a doubly-degenerate level or two non-degenerate levels. In the sequential tunneling regime we analyze the behaviour of heat currents and rectification as functions of the position of the energy levels and of the temperature bias. In particular, we derive an upper bound for rectification in the closed-circuit setup with the doubly-degenerate level. We also prove the absence of a bound for the case of two non-degenerate levels and identify the ideal system parameters to achieve nearly perfect rectification. The second part of the paper deals with the effect of second-order cotunneling contributions, including both elastic and inelastic processes. In all cases we find that there exists ranges of values of parameters (such as the levels' position) where rectification is enhanced by cotunneling. In particular, in the doubly-degenerate level case we find that cotunneling corrections can enhance rectification when they reduce the magnitude of the heat currents. For the four-terminal configuration, we analyze the non-local situation of two Coulomb-coupled quantum dots, each connected to two terminals: the temperature bias is applied to the two terminals connected to one quantum dot, while the heat currents of interest are the ones flowing in the other quantum dot. Remarkably, in this situation we find that non-local rectification can be perfect as a consequence of the fact that the heat currents vanish for properly tuned parameters.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Reinforcement learning-enhanced protocols for coherent population-transfer in three-level quantum systems

We deploy a combination of reinforcement learning-based approaches and more traditional optimization techniques to identify optimal protocols for population transfer in a multi-level system. We constraint our strategy to the case of fixed coupling rates but time-varying detunings, a situation that would simplify considerably the implementation of population transfer in relevant experimental platforms, such as semiconducting and superconducting ones. Our approach is able to explore the space of possible control protocols to reveal the existence of efficient protocols that, remarkably, differ from (and can be superior to) standard Raman, STIRAP or other adiabatic schemes. The new protocols that we identify are robust against both energy losses and dephasing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Thermal rectification through a nonlinear quantum resonator

We present a comprehensive and systematic study of thermal rectification in a prototypical low-dimensional quantum system -- a non-linear resonator: we identify necessary conditions to observe thermal rectification and we discuss strategies to maximize it. We focus, in particular, on the case where anharmonicity is very strong and the system reduces to a qubit. In the latter case, we derive general upper bounds on rectification which hold in the weak system-bath coupling regime, and we show how the Lamb shift can be exploited to enhance rectification. We then go beyond the weak-coupling regime by employing different methods: i) including co-tunneling processes, ii) using the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism and iii) using the Feynman-Vernon path integral approach. We find that the strong coupling regime allows us to violate the bounds derived in the weak-coupling regime, providing us with clear signatures of high order coherent processes visible in the thermal rectification. In the general case, where many levels participate to the system dynamics, we compare the heat rectification calculated with the equation of motion method and with a mean-field approximation. We find that the former method predicts, for a small or intermediate anharmonicity, a larger rectification coefficient.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Charge carrier density noise in graphene: effect of localized/delocalized traps

Graphene-based devices show $1/f$ low-frequency noise in several electronic transport properties, such as mobility and charge carrier concentration. The recent outburst of experimental studies on graphene-based devices integrated into circuit quantum electrodynamics systems has rekindled the interest in low-frequency charge noise. We investigate charge carrier density noise in graphene within the McWorther model where noise is induced by electron traps in the substrate. We focus on the large doping regime and introduce a simple modelization of the effect of localized/delocalized traps in terms of single/double spin occupancy of trap states. We find that in both cases the charge carrier spectrum of graphene obeys the $1/f^α$ power-law behavior where $α$ is very close to the unity, and for each case we evaluate the deviation $β=1-α$. The amplitude of the noise is found to depend on the trap energy distribution and on temperature. Single/double spin occupancy of trap states influences the temperature dependence of noise amplitude only to second order.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Low-frequency critical current noise in graphene Josephson junctions in the open-circuit gate voltage limit

We investigate critical current noise in short ballistic graphene Josephson junctions in the open-circuit gate-voltage limit within the McWorther model. We find flicker noise in a wide frequency range and discuss the temperature dependence of the noise amplitude as a function of the doping level. At the charge neutrality point we find a singular temperature dependence $T^{-3}$, strikingly different from the linear dependence expected for short ballistic graphene Josephson junctions under fixed gate voltage.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗