Biomedical subjects

D Leibfried

Publications and source records attributed to D Leibfried.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Experimental purification of two-atom entanglement.

Entanglement is a necessary resource for quantum applications--entanglement established between quantum systems at different locations enables private communication and quantum teleportation, and facilitates quantum information processing. Distributed entanglement is established by preparing an entangled pair of quantum particles in one location, and transporting one member of the pair to another location. However, decoherence during transport reduces the quality (fidelity) of the entanglement. A protocol to achieve entanglement 'purification' has been proposed to improve the fidelity after transport. This protocol uses separate quantum operations at each location and classical communication to distil high-fidelity entangled pairs from lower-fidelity pairs. Proof-of-principle experiments distilling entangled photon pairs have been carried out. However, these experiments obtained distilled pairs with a low probability of success and required destruction of the entangled pairs, rendering them unavailable for further processing. Here we report efficient and non-destructive entanglement purification with atomic quantum bits. Two noisy entangled pairs were created and distilled into one higher-fidelity pair available for further use. Success probabilities were above 35 per cent. The many applications of entanglement purification make it one of the most important techniques in quantum information processing.

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PubMed2006

Microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap for scalable quantum information processing.

Individual laser-cooled 24Mg+ ions are confined in a linear Paul trap with a novel geometry where gold electrodes are located in a single plane and the ions are trapped 40 microm above this plane. The relatively simple trap design and fabrication procedure are important for large-scale quantum information processing (QIP) using ions. Measured ion motional frequencies are compared to simulations. Measurements of ion recooling after cooling is temporarily suspended yield a heating rate of approximately 5 motional quanta per millisecond for a trap frequency of 2.83 MHz, sufficiently low to be useful for QIP.

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PubMed2005

Creation of a six-atom 'Schrödinger cat' state.

Among the classes of highly entangled states of multiple quantum systems, the so-called 'Schrödinger cat' states are particularly useful. Cat states are equal superpositions of two maximally different quantum states. They are a fundamental resource in fault-tolerant quantum computing and quantum communication, where they can enable protocols such as open-destination teleportation and secret sharing. They play a role in fundamental tests of quantum mechanics and enable improved signal-to-noise ratios in interferometry. Cat states are very sensitive to decoherence, and as a result their preparation is challenging and can serve as a demonstration of good quantum control. Here we report the creation of cat states of up to six atomic qubits. Each qubit's state space is defined by two hyperfine ground states of a beryllium ion; the cat state corresponds to an entangled equal superposition of all the atoms in one hyperfine state and all atoms in the other hyperfine state. In our experiments, the cat states are prepared in a three-step process, irrespective of the number of entangled atoms. Together with entangled states of a different class created in Innsbruck, this work represents the current state-of-the-art for large entangled states in any qubit system.

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PubMed2005

Long-lived qubit memory using atomic ions.

We demonstrate experimentally a robust quantum memory using a magnetic-field-independent hyperfine transition in 9Be+ atomic ion qubits at a magnetic field B approximately = 0.01194 T. We observe that the single physical qubit memory coherence time is greater than 10 s, an improvement of approximately 5 orders of magnitude from previous experiments with 9Be+. We also observe long coherence times of decoherence-free subspace logical qubits comprising two entangled physical qubits and discuss the merits of each type of qubit.

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PubMed2005

Hyperfine coherence in the presence of spontaneous photon scattering.

The coherence of a hyperfine-state superposition of a trapped 9Be+ ion in the presence of off-resonant light is studied experimentally. It is shown that Rayleigh elastic scattering of photons that does not change state populations also does not affect coherence. We observe coherence times that exceed the average scattering time of 19 photons which is determined from measured Stark shifts. This result implies that, with sufficient control over its parameters, laser light can be used to manipulate hyperfine-state superpositions with very little decoherence.

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PubMed2005

Implementation of the semiclassical quantum Fourier transform in a scalable system.

We report the implementation of the semiclassical quantum Fourier transform in a system of three beryllium ion qubits (two-level quantum systems) confined in a segmented multizone trap. The quantum Fourier transform is the crucial final step in Shor's algorithm, and it acts on a register of qubits to determine the periodicity of the quantum state's amplitudes. Because only probability amplitudes are required for this task, a more efficient semiclassical version can be used, for which only single-qubit operations conditioned on measurement outcomes are required. We apply the transform to several input states of different periodicities; the results enable the location of peaks corresponding to the original periods. This demonstration incorporates the key elements of a scalable ion-trap architecture, suggesting the future capability of applying the quantum Fourier transform to a large number of qubits as required for a useful quantum factoring algorithm.

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PubMed2005

Enhanced quantum state detection efficiency through quantum information processing.

We investigate theoretically and experimentally how quantum state-detection efficiency is improved by the use of quantum information processing (QIP). Experimentally, we encode the state of one 9Be(+) ion qubit with one additional ancilla qubit. By measuring both qubits, we reduce the state-detection error in the presence of noise. The deviation from the theoretically allowed reduction is due to infidelities of the QIP operations. Applying this general scheme to more ancilla qubits suggests that error in the individual qubit measurements need not be a limit to scalable quantum computation.

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PubMed2004

Realization of quantum error correction.

Scalable quantum computation and communication require error control to protect quantum information against unavoidable noise. Quantum error correction protects information stored in two-level quantum systems (qubits) by rectifying errors with operations conditioned on the measurement outcomes. Error-correction protocols have been implemented in nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, but the inherent limitations of this technique prevent its application to quantum information processing. Here we experimentally demonstrate quantum error correction using three beryllium atomic-ion qubits confined to a linear, multi-zone trap. An encoded one-qubit state is protected against spin-flip errors by means of a three-qubit quantum error-correcting code. A primary ion qubit is prepared in an initial state, which is then encoded into an entangled state of three physical qubits (the primary and two ancilla qubits). Errors are induced simultaneously in all qubits at various rates. The encoded state is decoded back to the primary ion one-qubit state, making error information available on the ancilla ions, which are separated from the primary ion and measured. Finally, the primary qubit state is corrected on the basis of the ancillae measurement outcome. We verify error correction by comparing the corrected final state to the uncorrected state and to the initial state. In principle, the approach enables a quantum state to be maintained by means of repeated error correction, an important step towards scalable fault-tolerant quantum computation using trapped ions.

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PubMed2004

Quantum dense coding with atomic qubits.

We report the implementation of quantum dense coding on individual atomic qubits with the use of two trapped 9Be+ ions. The protocol is implemented with a complete Bell measurement that distinguishes the four operations used to encode two bits of classical information. We measure an average transmission fidelity of 0.85(1) and determine a channel capacity of 1.16(1).

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PubMed2004

Deterministic quantum teleportation of atomic qubits.

Quantum teleportation provides a means to transport quantum information efficiently from one location to another, without the physical transfer of the associated quantum-information carrier. This is achieved by using the non-local correlations of previously distributed, entangled quantum bits (qubits). Teleportation is expected to play an integral role in quantum communication and quantum computation. Previous experimental demonstrations have been implemented with optical systems that used both discrete and continuous variables, and with liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. Here we report unconditional teleportation of massive particle qubits using atomic (9Be+) ions confined in a segmented ion trap, which aids individual qubit addressing. We achieve an average fidelity of 78 per cent, which exceeds the fidelity of any protocol that does not use entanglement. This demonstration is also important because it incorporates most of the techniques necessary for scalable quantum information processing in an ion-trap system.

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PubMed2004

Toward Heisenberg-limited spectroscopy with multiparticle entangled states.

The precision in spectroscopy of any quantum system is fundamentally limited by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation for energy and time. For N systems, this limit requires that they be in a quantum-mechanically entangled state. We describe a scalable method of spectroscopy that can potentially take full advantage of entanglement to reach the Heisenberg limit and has the practical advantage that the spectroscopic information is transferred to states with optimal protection against readout noise. We demonstrate our method experimentally with three beryllium ions. The spectroscopic sensitivity attained is 1.45(2) times as high as that of a perfect experiment with three non-entangled particles.

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PubMed2003

Quantum information processing with trapped ions.

Experiments directed towards the development of a quantum computer based on trapped atomic ions are described briefly. We discuss the implementation of single-qubit operations and gates between qubits. A geometric phase gate between two ion qubits is described. Limitations of the trapped-ion method such as those caused by Stark shifts and spontaneous emission are addressed. Finally, we describe a strategy to realize a large-scale device.

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PubMed2003

Experimental demonstration of a robust, high-fidelity geometric two ion-qubit phase gate.

Universal logic gates for two quantum bits (qubits) form an essential ingredient of quantum computation. Dynamical gates have been proposed in the context of trapped ions; however, geometric phase gates (which change only the phase of the physical qubits) offer potential practical advantages because they have higher intrinsic resistance to certain small errors and might enable faster gate implementation. Here we demonstrate a universal geometric pi-phase gate between two beryllium ion-qubits, based on coherent displacements induced by an optical dipole force. The displacements depend on the internal atomic states; the motional state of the ions is unimportant provided that they remain in the regime in which the force can be considered constant over the extent of each ion's wave packet. By combining the gate with single-qubit rotations, we have prepared ions in an entangled Bell state with 97% fidelity-about six times better than in a previous experiment demonstrating a universal gate between two ion-qubits. The particular properties of the gate make it attractive for a multiplexed trap architecture that would enable scaling to large numbers of ion-qubits.

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PubMed2003

Experimental demonstration of a technique to generate arbitrary quantum superposition states of a harmonically bound spin-1/2 particle.

Using a single, harmonically trapped 9Be(+) ion, we experimentally demonstrate a technique for generation of arbitrary states of a two-level particle confined by a harmonic potential. Rather than engineering a single Hamiltonian that evolves the system to a desired final state, we implement a technique that applies a sequence of simple operations to synthesize the state.

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PubMed2002

Experimental demonstration of a controlled-NOT wave-packet gate.

We report the experimental demonstration of a controlled-NOT (CNOT) quantum logic gate between motional and internal-state qubits of a single ion where, as opposed to previously demonstrated gates, the conditional dynamics depends on the extent of the ion's wave packet. Advantages of this CNOT gate over one demonstrated previously are its immunity from Stark shifts due to off-resonant couplings and the fact that an auxiliary internal level is not required. We characterize the gate logic through measurements of the postgate ion state populations for both logic basis and superposition input states, and we demonstrate the gate coherence via an interferometric measurement.

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PubMed2002

Trapped-ion quantum simulator: experimental application to nonlinear interferometers.

We show how an experimentally realized set of operations on a single trapped ion is sufficient to simulate a wide class of Hamiltonians of a spin-1/2 particle in an external potential. This system is also able to simulate other physical dynamics. As a demonstration, we simulate the action of two nth order nonlinear optical beam splitters comprising an interferometer sensitive to phase shift in one of the interferometer beam paths. The sensitivity in determining these phase shifts increases linearly with n, and the simulation demonstrates that the use of nonlinear beam splitters (n=2,3) enhances this sensitivity compared to the standard quantum limit imposed by a linear beam splitter (n=1).

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PubMed2002

Coupling a single atomic quantum bit to a high finesse optical cavity.

The quadrupole S(1/2)-D(5/2) optical transition of a single trapped Ca+ ion, well suited for encoding a quantum bit of information, is coherently coupled to the standing wave field of a high finesse cavity. The coupling is verified by observing the ion's response to both spatial and temporal variations of the intracavity field. We also achieve deterministic coupling of the cavity mode to the ion's vibrational state by selectively exciting vibrational state-changing transitions and by controlling the position of the ion in the standing wave field with nanometer precision.

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PubMed2000

Experimental demonstration of ground state laser cooling with electromagnetically induced transparency.

Ground state laser cooling of a single trapped Ca(+)on is achieved with a technique which tailors the absorption profile for the cooling laser by exploiting electromagnetically induced transparency. Using the Zeeman structure of the S(1/2) to P(1/2) dipole transition we achieve up to 90% ground state probability. The new method is robust, easy to implement, and proves particularly useful for cooling several motional degrees of freedom simultaneously, which is of great practical importance for the implementation of quantum logic schemes with trapped ions.

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