QIC Abstracts

 Vol.9 No.11&12 November 1, 2009

Research Articles:

Demonstration of a scalable, multiplexed ion trap for quantum information processing (pp0901-0919)
          
D.R. Leibrandt, J. Labaziewicz, R.J. Clark, I.L. Chuang, R.J. Epstein,
         
C. Ospelkaus, J.H. Wesenberg, J.H. Bollinger, D. Leibfried, D. Wineland,
         
D. Stick, J. Stick, C. Monroe, C.-S. Pai, Y. Low, R. Frahm, and R.E. Slusher
A scalable, multiplexed ion trap for quantum information processing is fabricated and tested. The trap design and fabrication process are optimized for scalability to small trap size and large numbers of interconnected traps, and for integration of control electronics and optics. Multiple traps with similar designs are tested with $^{111}$Cd$^+$, $^{25}$Mg$^+$, and $^{88}$Sr$^{+}$ ions at room temperature and with $^{88}$Sr$^+$ at 6 K, with respective ion lifetimes of 90 s, 300 $\pm$ 30 s, 56 $\pm$ 6 s, and 4.5 $\pm$ 1.1 hours. The motional heating rate for $^{25}$Mg$^{+}$ at room temperature and a trap frequency of 1.6 MHz is measured to be 7 $\pm$ 3 quanta per millisecond. For $^{88}$Sr$^{+}$ at 6 K and 540 kHz the heating rate is measured to be 220 $\pm$ 30 quanta per second.

High-fidelity quantum control using ion crystals in a Penning trap (pp0920-0949)
          
M.J. Biercuk, H. Uys, A.P. VanDevender, N. Shiga, W.M. Itano,
         
and J.J. Bollinger
We provide an introduction to the use of ion crystals in a Penning trap for experiments in quantum information. Macroscopic Penning traps allow for the containment of a few to a few million atomic ions whose internal states may be used in quantum information experiments. Ions are laser Doppler cooled, and the mutual Coulomb repulsion of the ions leads to the formation of crystalline arrays. The structure and dimensionality of the resulting ion crystals may be tuned using a combination of control laser beams and external potentials. We discuss the use of two-dimensional $^{9}$Be$^{+}$ ion crystals for experimental tests of quantum control techniques. Our primary qubit is the 124 GHz ground-state electron spin flip transition, which we drive using microwaves. An ion crystal represents a spatial ensemble of qubits, but the effects of inhomogeneities across a typical crystal are small, and as such we treat the ensemble as a single effective spin. We are able to initialize the qubits in a simple state and perform a projective measurement on the system. We demonstrate full control of the qubit Bloch vector, performing arbitrary high-fidelity rotations ($\tau_{\pi}\sim$200 $\mu$s). Randomized Benchmarking demonstrates an error per gate (a Pauli-randomized $\pi/2$ and $\pi$ pulse pair) of $8\pm1\times10^{-4}$. Ramsey interferometry and spin-locking measurements are used to elucidate the limits of qubit coherence in the system, yielding a typical free-induction decay coherence time of $T_{2}\sim$2 ms, and a limiting $T_{1\rho}\sim$688 ms. These experimental specifications make ion crystals in a Penning trap ideal candidates for novel experiments in quantum control. As such, we briefly describe recent efforts aimed at studying the error-suppressing capabilities of dynamical decoupling pulse sequences, demonstrating an ability to extend qubit coherence and suppress phase errors. We conclude with a discussion of future avenues for experimental exploration, including the use of additional nuclear-spin-flip transitions for effective multiqubit protocols, and the potential for Coulomb crystals to form a useful testbed for studies of large-scale entanglement.

Deterministic quantum distribution of a d-ary key (pp0950-0962)
          
A. Eusebi and S. Mancini
We present an extension to a d-ary alphabet of a recently proposed deterministic quantum key distribution protocol. It relies on the use of mutually unbiased bases in prime power dimension d, for which we provide an explicit expression. Then, by considering a powerful individual attack, we show that the security of the protocol is maximal for d=3.

Robust cryptography in the noisy-quantum-storage model (pp0963-0996)
          
C. Schaffner, B. Terhal, and S. Wehner
It was shown that cryptographic primitives can be implemented based on the assumption that quantum storage of qubits is noisy. In this work we analyze a protocol for the universal task of oblivious transfer that can be implemented using quantum-key-distribution (QKD) hardware in the practical setting where honest participants are unable to perform noise-free operations. We derive trade-offs between the amount of storage noise, the amount of noise in the operations performed by the honest participants and the security of oblivious transfer which are greatly improved compared to the results in \cite{prl:noisy}. As an example, we show that for the case of depolarizing noise in storage we can obtain secure oblivious transfer as long as the quantum bit-error rate of the channel does not exceed 11% and the noise on the channel is strictly less than the quantum storage noise. This is optimal for the protocol considered. Finally, we show that our analysis easily carries over to quantum protocols for secure identification.

Locally undetermined states, generalized Schmidt decomposition, and application in distributed computing (pp0997-1012)
          
Y. Feng, R. Duan, and M. Ying
Multipartite quantum states that cannot be uniquely determined by their reduced states of all proper subsets of the parties exhibit some inherit `high-order' correlation. This paper elaborates this issue by giving necessary and sufficient conditions for a pure multipartite state to be locally undetermined, and moreover, characterizing precisely all the pure states sharing the same set of reduced states with it. Interestingly, local determinability of pure states is closely related to a generalized notion of Schmidt decomposition. Furthermore, we find that locally undetermined states have some applications to the well-known consensus problem in distributed computing. To be specific, given some physically separated agents, when communication between them, either classical or quantum, is unreliable, then there exists a totally correct and completely fault-tolerant protocol for them to reach a consensus if and only if they share a priori a locally undetermined quantum state.

On global effects caused by locally noneffective unitary operations (pp1013-1029)
          
S. Gharibian, H. Kampermann, and D. Bruss
Given a bipartite quantum state $\rho$ with subsystems $A$ and $B$ of arbitrary dimensions, we study the entanglement detecting capabilities of locally noneffective, or cyclic, unitary operations [Fu, Europhys. Lett., vol. 75]. Local cyclic unitaries have the special property that they leave their target subsystem invariant. We investigate the distance between $\rho$ and the global state after local application of such unitaries as a possible indicator of entanglement. To this end, we derive and discuss closed formulae for the maximal such distance achievable for three cases of interest: (pseudo)pure quantum states, Werner states, and two-qubit states. What makes this criterion interesting, as we show here, is that it surprisingly displays behavior similar to recent anomalies observed for non-locality measures in higher dimensions, as well as demonstrates an equivalence to the CHSH inequality for certain classes of two-qubit states. Yet, despite these similarities, the criterion is not itself a non-locality measure. We also consider entanglement detection in bound entangled states.

Quantum universality by state distillation (pp1030-1052)
          
B.W. Reichardt
Quantum universality can be achieved using classically controlled stabilizer operations and repeated preparation of certain ancilla states. Which ancilla states suffice for universality? This ``magic states distillation" question is closely related to quantum fault tolerance. Lower bounds on the noise tolerable on the ancilla help give lower bounds on the tolerable noise rate threshold for fault-tolerant computation. Upper bounds show the limits of threshold upper-bound arguments based on the Gottesman-Knill theorem. We extend the range of single-qubit mixed states that are known to give universality, by using a simple parity-checking operation. For applications to proving threshold lower bounds, certain practical stability characteristics are often required, and we also show a stable distillation procedure.}{No distillation upper bounds are known beyond those given by the Gottesman-Knill theorem. One might ask whether distillation upper bounds reduce to upper bounds for single-qubit ancilla states. For multi-qubit pure states and previously considered two-qubit ancilla states, the answer is yes. However, we exhibit two-qubit mixed states that are not mixtures of stabilizer states, but for which every postselected stabilizer reduction from two qubits to one outputs a mixture of stabilizer states. Distilling such states would require true multi-qubit state distillation methods.

Fast amplification of QMA (pp1053-1068)
          
D. Nagaj, P. Wocjan, and Y. Zhang
Given a verifier circuit for a problem in QMA, we show how to exponentially amplify the gap between its acceptance probabilities in the `yes' and `no' cases, with a method that is quadratically faster than the procedure given by Marriott and Watrous. Our construction is natively quantum, based on the analogy of a product of two reflections and a quantum walk. Second, in some special cases we show how to amplify the acceptance probability for good witnesses to 1, making a step towards the proof that QMA with one-sided error QMA_1 is equal to QMA. Finally, we simplify the filter-state method to search for QMA witnesses by Poulin and Wocjan.

Some properties of partial fidelities (pp1069-1080)
          
A.E. Rastegin
Basic properties of Uhlmann's partial fidelities are discussed. Statistical interpretation in terms of POVM measurements is established. Multiplicativity properties are considered. The relationship between partial fidelities and partitioned trace distances is derived. As it is shown, the partial fidelities cannot decrease under unistochastic quantum operations. Thus, the partial fidelities have good properties in the sense of their use as distinguishability measures.

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