Quantum Speed Limit for Dynamics of Central Spin Model with Initial System-Bath Correlations

We investigate the quantum speed limit (QSL) time of an electronic spin coupled to a bath of nuclear spins. We consider three types of initial states with different correlations between the system and bath, i.e., quantum correlation, classical correlation, and no any correlation. Interestingly, we show that the QSL times of the central spin for these three types of initial correlations are identical when the couplings are homogeneous. However, it is remarkable different for inhomogenous couplings. The QSL time of the central spin is sensitive to the initial states, the average coupling strength, the distribution of the couplings between the system and bath and the number of the nuclear spins in the bath. Furthermore, we find that the coherence in the initial state has significant influences on the QSL time of the system, and can lead to the increase of QSL time for homogeneous couplings.     

Anomalous decoherence effect in a quantum bath

Decoherence of quantum objects in noisy environments is important in quantum sciences and technologies. It is generally believed that different processes coupled to the same noise source have similar decoherence behaviors and stronger noises cause faster decoherence. Here we show that in a quantum bath, the case can be the opposite. We predict that the multitransition of a nitrogen-vacancy center spin-1 in diamond can have longer coherence time than the single transitions, even though the former suffers twice stronger noises from the nuclear spin bath than the latter. This anomalous decoherence effect is due to manipulation of the bath evolution via flips of the center spin.     

Spectrum of an electron spin coupled to an unpolarized bath of nuclear spins

The main source of decoherence for an electron spin confined to a quantum dot is the hyperfine interaction with nuclear spins. To analyze this process theoretically we diagonalize the central spin Hamiltonian in the high magnetic B-field limit. Then we project the eigenstates onto an unpolarized state of the nuclear bath and find that the resulting density of states has Gaussian tails. The level spacing of the nuclear sublevels is exponentially small in the middle of each of the two electron Zeeman levels but increases superexponentially away from the center. This suggests to select states from the wings of the distribution when the system is projected on a single eigenstate by a measurement to reduce the noise of the nuclear spin bath. This theory is valid when the external magnetic field is larger than a typical Overhauser field at high nuclear spin temperature.     

Restoring coherence lost to a slow interacting mesoscopic spin bath

For a two-state quantum object interacting with a slow mesoscopic interacting spin bath, we show that a many-body solution of the bath dynamics conditioned on the quantum-object state leads to an efficient control scheme to recover the lost quantum-object coherence through disentanglement. We demonstrate the theory with the realistic problem of one electron spin in a bath of many interacting nuclear spins in a semiconductor quantum dot. The spin language can be easily generalized to a quantum object in contact with a bath of interacting multilevel quantum units with the caveat that the bath is mesoscopic and its dynamics is slow compared with the quantum object.     

Influences of Initial States on Entanglement Dynamics of Two Central Spins in a Spin Environment

We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two electronic spins coupled to a bath of nuclear spins for two special cases, one is that two central spins both interact with a common bath, and the other is that one of two spins interacts with a bath. We consider three types of initial states with different correlations between the system and the bath, i.e., quantum correlation, classical correlation, and no-correlation. We show that the initial correlations (no matter quantum correlations or classical correlations) can effectively avoid the occurrence of entanglement sudden death. Irrespective of whether both two spins or only one of the two spins interacts with the bath, the system can gain more entanglement in the process of the time evolution for initial quantum correlations. In addition, we find that the effects of the distribution of coupling constants on entanglement dynamics crucially depend on the initial state of the spin bath.     

Optical pumping of quantum-dot nuclear spins

Hyperfine interactions with randomly oriented nuclear spins present a fundamental decoherence mechanism for electron spin in a quantum dot, that can be suppressed by polarizing the nuclear spins. Here, we analyze an all-optical scheme that uses hyperfine interactions to implement laser cooling of quantum-dot nuclear spins. The limitation imposed on spin cooling by the dark states for collective spin relaxation can be overcome by modulating the electron wave function.     

High-dimensional quantum state transfer in a noisy network environment

We propose and analyze an efficient high-dimensional quantum state transfer protocol in an XX coupling spin network with a hypercube structure or chain structure. Under free spin wave approximation, unitary evolution results in a perfect high-dimensional quantum swap operation requiring neither external manipulation nor weak coupling. Evolution time is independent of either distance between registers or dimensions of sent states, which can improve the computational efficiency. In the low temperature regime and thermodynamic limit, the decoherence caused by a noisy environment is studied with a model of an antiferromagnetic spin bath coupled to quantum channels via an Ising-type interaction. It is found that while the decoherence reduces the fidelity of state transfer, increasing intra-channel coupling can strongly suppress such an effect. These observations demonstrate the robustness of the proposed scheme.     

Spin quantum bit with ferromagnetic contacts for circuit QED

We theoretically propose a scheme for a spin quantum bit based on a double quantum dot contacted to ferromagnetic elements. Interface exchange effects enable an all electric manipulation of the spin and a switchable strong coupling to a superconducting coplanar waveguide cavity. Our setup does not rely on any specific band structure and can in principle be realized with many different types of nanoconductors. This allows us to envision on-chip single spin manipulation and readout using cavity QED techniques.     

Nuclear spin cooling using Overhauser-field selective coherent population trapping

We show that a quantum interference effect in optical absorption from two electronic spin states of a solid-state emitter can be used to prepare the surrounding environment of nuclear spins in well-defined states, thereby suppressing electronic spin dephasing. The coupled electron-nuclei system evolves into a coherent population trapping state by optical-excitation-induced nuclear-spin diffusion for a broad range of initial optical detunings. The spectroscopic signature of this evolution where the single-electron strongly modifies its environment is a drastic broadening of the dark resonance in optical absorption experiments. The large difference in electronic and nuclear time scales allows us to verify the preparation of nuclear spins in the desired state.     

Test by NMR of the phase coherence of electromagnetically induced transparency

Electromagnetically induced transparency is an effect observed in atomic systems, originating from quantum interference, in which electromagnetic transitions to and from a certain quantum state become suppressed. This dark state is also characterized by a quantum phase, relative to other states, which theoretically should stop evolving, but remain phase coherent, during transparency. We test this theoretical prediction using techniques developed for liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computation, applied to a spin-7/2 nuclear spin system. A sequence of quantum operations is applied to create the dark state, and during transparency its phase evolution is measured relative to a reference state using Ramsey interferometry. Experimental measurements of the fringe visibility are in excellent agreement with theoretical expectations, taking into account measured decoherence rates.     

Coupling and control in coherently driven and asymmetrically synchronized hybrid electron-nuclear spin system

We study the coupling and control adaptation of a hybrid electron-nuclear spin system using the laser mediated proton beam in MeV energy regime. The asymmetric control mechanism is based on exact optimization of both: the measure of exchange interaction and anisotropy of the hyperfine interaction induced in the resonance with optimal channeled protons (CP) superfocused field, allowing manipulation over arbitrary localized spatial centers while addressing only the electron spin. Using highly precise and coherent proton channeling regime we have obtained efficient pulse shaping separator technique aimed for spatio-temporal engineering of quantum states, introducing a method for control of nuclear spins, which are coupled via anisotropic hyperfine interactions in isolated electron spin manifold, without radio wave (RW) pulses. The presented method can be efficiently implemented in synchronized spin networks with the purpose to facilitate preservation and efficient transfer of experimentally observed quantum particle states, contributing to the overall background noise reduction.     

The Dynamical Evolution of Quantum Correlations in the Two Isolate Spin Particles Coupled to a Common Bath

We study the dynamical evolution of quantum correlations between two central spins independently coupled to a common bath, which are represented by quantum entanglement and quantum discord. According to the results of the exact solution, we show that quantum discord is more robust and includes richer correlation than quantum entanglement due to the nonvanishing quantum correlation in the region of entanglement death, i.e., the separable states maybe contain nonclassical correlations. We discuss the effects of the intrinsic properties of the bath on quantum correlation between the two central spins in the XY and XXZ model baths. At the low temperature, the central system can keep the good quantum correlation. With the more spin number in the bath, the dynamical evolution of quantum correlation can be bounded with the small oscillation and finally approaches a stable value. In addition, we find that the interaction between the central spins and the bath in the z direction has the significant effects on quantum correlation of the central spin system.     

Adiabatic Passage of Collective Excitations in Atomic Ensembles

We describe a theoretical scheme that allows for transfer of quantum states of atomic collective excitation between two macroscopic atomic ensembles localized in two spatially-separated domains. The conception is based on the occurrence of double-exciton dark states due to the collective destructive quantum interference of the emissions from the two atomic ensembles. With an adiabatically coherence manipulation for the atom-field couplings by stimulated Rmann scattering, the dark states will extrapolate from an exciton state of an ensemble to that of another. This realizes the transport of quantum information among atomic ensembles.     

Adiabatic Passage of Collective Excitations in Atomic Ensembles

We describe a theoretical scheme that allows for transfer of quantum states of atomic collective excitation between two macroscopic atomic ensembles localized in two spatially-separated domains. The conception is based on the occurrence of double-exciton dark states due to the collective destructive quantum interference of the emissions from the two atomic ensembles. With an adiabatically coherence manipulation for the atom-field couplings by stimulated Ramann scattering, the dark states will extrapolate from an exciton state of an ensemble to that of another. This realizes the transport of quantum information among atomic ensembles.     

Direct measurement of the hole-nuclear spin interaction in single InP/GaInP quantum dots using photoluminescence spectroscopy

We measure the hyperfine interaction of the valence band hole with nuclear spins in single InP/GaInP semiconductor quantum dots. Detection of photoluminescence (PL) of both "bright" and "dark" excitons enables direct measurement of the Overhauser shift of states with the same electron but opposite hole spin projections. We find that the hole hyperfine constant is ≈11% of that of the electron and has the opposite sign. By measuring the degree of circular polarization of the PL, an upper limit to the contribution of the heavy-light hole mixing to the measured value of the hole hyperfine constant is deduced. Our results imply that environment-independent hole spins are not realizable in III-V semiconductor, a result important for solid-state quantum information processing using hole spin qubits.     

Quantum Hall ferromagnetic states and spin-orbit interactions in the fractional regime

The competition between the Zeeman energy and the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings is studied for fractional quantum Hall states by including correlation effects. A transition of the direction of the spin polarization is predicted at specific values of the Zeeman energy. We show that these values can be expressed in terms of the pair-correlation function, and thus provide information about the microscopic ground state. We examine the particular examples of the Laughlin wave functions and the 5/2-Pfaffian state. We also include effects of the nuclear bath.     

Enhancing the coherence of a spin qubit by operating it as a feedback loop that controls its nuclear spin bath

In many realizations of electron spin qubits the dominant source of decoherence is the fluctuating nuclear spin bath of the host material. The slowness of this bath lends itself to a promising mitigation strategy where the nuclear spin bath is prepared in a narrowed state with suppressed fluctuations. Here, this approach is realized for a two-electron spin qubit in a GaAs double quantum dot and a nearly tenfold increase in the inhomogeneous dephasing time T?* is demonstrated. Between subsequent measurements, the bath is prepared by using the qubit as a feedback loop that first measures its nuclear environment by coherent precession, and then polarizes it depending on the final state. This procedure results in a stable fixed point at a nonzero polarization gradient between the two dots, which enables fast universal qubit control.     

Electron transport in a double quantum dot governed by a nuclear magnetic field

We investigate theoretically electron transfer in a double dot in a situation where spin blockade is lifted by nuclear magnetic field: this has been recently achieved in experiment [F. Koppens, Science 309, 1346 (2005)]. We show that for a given realization of nuclear magnetic field spin blockade can be restored by tuning external magnetic field; this may be useful for quantum manipulation of the device.     

Spin manipulation in semiconductor quantum dots qubit

Thirty years of effort in semiconductor quantum dots has resulted in significant developments in the control of spin quantum bits(qubits). The natural two-energy level of spin states provides a path toward quantum information processing. In particular, the experimental implementation of spin control with high fidelity provides the possibility of realizing quantum computing. In this review, we will discuss the basic elements of spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots and summarize some important experiments that have demonstrated the direct manipulation of spin states with an applied electric field and/or magnetic field. The results of recent experiments on spin qubits reveal a bright future for quantum information processing.     

Bits,time, carriers,and matter

The formal structure of quantum information theory is based on the well-founded concepts and postulates of quantum mechanics. In the present contribution, I am inverting the usual approach presented in textbooks by beginning with the use of bit states as basic and fundamental units of information and establish a dynamical map for them. The condition of reversibility, imposed on an ordered sequence of actions operating on a bit state, introduces, by necessity, the unitarity property of actions. I also verify that the uniformity of time, as a parameter for ordering events, is due to the admission of a composition law for the actions. In the limit of infinitesimal intervals between actions, a reversible and linear equation arises for the dynamical changes in time of a qubit (superposition of bit states). The admission that a bit of information is stored or carried by a massive particle necessarily leads to the Schrödinger–Pauli equation (SPE); the bit is associated to a spin 1/2. Within this approach, I verify that the particle dynamical equation becomes “enslaved” by the spin dynamics. In other words, the bit (or spin) precedes in status the particle dynamical evolution, being at the root of the quantum character of the standard Schr¨odinger equation, even when spin and spatial degrees of freedom are uncoupled.