arXiv subjects

Timothy J. Proctor

Publications and source records attributed to Timothy J. Proctor.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Precision tomography of a three-qubit donor quantum processor in silicon

Nuclear spins were among the first physical platforms to be considered for quantum information processing, because of their exceptional quantum coherence and atomic-scale footprint. However, their full potential for quantum computing has not yet been realized, due to the lack of methods to link nuclear qubits within a scalable device combined with multi-qubit operations with sufficient fidelity to sustain fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we demonstrate universal quantum logic operations using a pair of ion-implanted 31P donor nuclei in a silicon nanoelectronic device. A nuclear two-qubit controlled-Z gate is obtained by imparting a geometric phase to a shared electron spin, and used to prepare entangled Bell states with fidelities up to 94.2(2.7)%. The quantum operations are precisely characterised using gate set tomography (GST), yielding one-qubit average gate fidelities up to 99.95(2)%, two-qubit average gate fidelity of 99.37(11)% and two-qubit preparation/measurement fidelities of 98.95(4)%. These three metrics indicate that nuclear spins in silicon are approaching the performance demanded in fault-tolerant quantum processors. We then demonstrate entanglement between the two nuclei and the shared electron by producing a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger three-qubit state with 92.5(1.0)% fidelity. Since electron spin qubits in semiconductors can be further coupled to other electrons or physically shuttled across different locations, these results establish a viable route for scalable quantum information processing using donor nuclear and electron spins.

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arXiv2019

Direct randomized benchmarking for multi-qubit devices

Benchmarking methods that can be adapted to multi-qubit systems are essential for assessing the overall or "holistic" performance of nascent quantum processors. The current industry standard is Clifford randomized benchmarking (RB), which measures a single error rate that quantifies overall performance. But scaling Clifford RB to many qubits is surprisingly hard. It has only been performed on 1, 2, and 3 qubits as of this writing. This reflects a fundamental inefficiency in Clifford RB: the $n$-qubit Clifford gates at its core have to be compiled into large circuits over the 1- and 2-qubit gates native to a device. As $n$ grows, the quality of these Clifford gates quickly degrades, making Clifford RB impractical at relatively low $n$. In this Letter, we propose a direct RB protocol that mostly avoids compiling. Instead, it uses random circuits over the native gates in a device, seeded by an initial layer of Clifford-like randomization. We demonstrate this protocol experimentally on 2 -- 5 qubits, using the publicly available IBMQX5. We believe this to be the greatest number of qubits holistically benchmarked, and this was achieved on a freely available device without any special tuning up. Our protocol retains the simplicity and convenient properties of Clifford RB: it estimates an error rate from an exponential decay. But it can be extended to processors with more qubits -- we present simulations on 10+ qubits -- and it reports a more directly informative and flexible error rate than the one reported by Clifford RB. We show how to use this flexibility to measure separate error rates for distinct sets of gates, which includes tasks such as measuring an average CNOT error rate.

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arXiv2017

Multi-parameter estimation in networked quantum sensors

We introduce a general model for a network of quantum sensors, and we use this model to consider the question: When can entanglement between the sensors, and/or global measurements, enhance the precision with which the network can measure a set of unknown parameters? We rigorously answer this question by presenting precise theorems proving that for a broad class of problems there is, at most, a very limited intrinsic advantage to using entangled states or global measurements. Moreover, for many estimation problems separable states and local measurements are optimal, and can achieve the ultimate quantum limit on the estimation uncertainty. This immediately implies that there are broad conditions under which simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters cannot outperform individual, independent estimations. Our results apply to any situation in which spatially localized sensors are unitarily encoded with independent parameters, such as when estimating multiple linear or non-linear optical phase shifts in quantum imaging, or when mapping out the spatial profile of an unknown magnetic field. We conclude by showing that entangling the sensors can enhance the estimation precision when the parameters of interest are global properties of the entire network.

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arXiv2016

Hybrid quantum computing with ancillas

In the quest to build a practical quantum computer, it is important to use efficient schemes for enacting the elementary quantum operations from which quantum computer programs are constructed. The opposing requirements of well-protected quantum data and fast quantum operations must be balanced to maintain the integrity of the quantum information throughout the computation. One important approach to quantum operations is to use an extra quantum system - an ancilla - to interact with the quantum data register. Ancillas can mediate interactions between separated quantum registers, and by using fresh ancillas for each quantum operation, data integrity can be preserved for longer. This review provides an overview of the basic concepts of the gate model quantum computer architecture, including the different possible forms of information encodings - from base two up to continuous variables - and a more detailed description of how the main types of ancilla-mediated quantum operations provide efficient quantum gates.

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arXiv2015

Low depth measurement-based quantum computation beyond two-level systems

Low depth measurement-based quantum computation with qudits ($d$-level systems) is investigated and a precise relationship between this powerful model and qudit quantum circuits is derived in terms of computational depth and size complexity. To facilitate this investigation a qudit `unbounded fan-out' circuit model, in which a qudit may be quantum-copied into an arbitrary number of ancillas in a single time-step, is introduced and shown to be capable of implementing interesting $n$-qudit unitaries in constant depth. A procedure for reducing the quantum computational depth in the measurement-based model is then proposed and using this it is then shown that there is a logarithmic depth separation between the depth complexity of qudit measurement-based computation and circuits composed of gates act on a bounded number of qudits. The relationship is made precise by showing that the depth complexity of the qudit measurement-based model is exactly equivalent to that of unbounded fan-out circuits. These results illustrate that the well-known advantages inherent in qubit measurement-based quantum computation are also applicable to the higher-dimensional generalisation. As qudits are both naturally available and have been shown to provide fundamental advantages over binary logic encodings, this then suggests that the qudit measurement-based model is a particularly appealing paradigm for universal quantum computation.

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arXiv2014

Quantum computation mediated by ancillary qudits and spin coherent states

Models of universal quantum computation in which the required interactions between register (computational) qubits are mediated by some ancillary system are highly relevant to experimental realisations of a quantum computer. We introduce such a universal model that employs a $d$-dimensional ancillary qudit. The ancilla-register interactions take the form of controlled displacements operators, with a displacement operator defined on the periodic and discrete lattice phase space of a qudit. We show that these interactions can implement controlled phase gates on the register by utilising geometric phases that are created when closed loops are traversed in this phase space. The extra degrees of freedom of the ancilla can be harnessed to reduce the number of operations required for certain gate sequences. In particular, we see that the computational advantages of the quantum bus (qubus) architecture, which employs a field-mode ancilla, are also applicable to this model. We then explore an alternative ancilla-mediated model which employs a spin-ensemble as the ancillary system and again the interactions with the register qubits are via controlled displacement operators, with a displacement operator defined on the Bloch sphere phase space of the spin coherent states of the ensemble. We discuss the computational advantages of this model and its relationship with the qubus architecture.

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arXiv2014

Minimal ancilla mediated quantum computation

Schemes of universal quantum computation in which the interactions between the computational elements, in a computational register, are mediated by some ancillary system are of interest due to their relevance to the physical implementation of a quantum computer. Furthermore, reducing the level of control required over both the ancillary and register systems has the potential to simplify any experimental implementation. In this paper we consider how to minimise the control needed to implement universal quantum computation in an ancilla-mediated fashion. Considering computational schemes which require no measurements and hence evolve by unitary dynamics for the global system, we show that when employing an ancilla qubit there are certain fixed-time ancilla-register interactions which, along with ancilla initialisation in the computational basis, are universal for quantum computation with no additional control of either the ancilla or the register. We develop two distinct models based on locally inequivalent interactions and we then discuss the relationship between these unitary models and the measurement-based ancilla-mediated models known as ancilla-driven quantum computation.

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arXiv2013

Universal quantum computation by the unitary control of ancilla qubits and using a fixed ancilla-register interaction

We characterise a model of universal quantum computation where the register (computational) qubits are controlled by ancillary qubits, using only a single fixed interaction between register and ancillary qubits. No additional access is required to the computational register and the dynamics of both the register and ancilla are unitary. This scheme is inspired by the measurement-based ancilla-driven quantum computation of Anders et al. [PRA 82, 020301(R), 2010], but does not require measurements of the ancillas, and in this respect is similar to the original gate based model of quantum computation. We consider what possible forms this ancilla-register interaction can take, with a proof that the interaction is necessarily locally equivalent to SWAP combined with an entangling controlled gate. We further show which Hamiltonians can create such interactions and discuss two examples; the two-qubit XY Hamiltonian and a particular case of the XXZ Hamiltonian. We then give an example of a simple, finite and fault tolerant gate set for universal quantum computation in this model.

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