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The control of quantum systems has been proven to possess trap-free optimization landscapes under the satisfaction of proper assumptions. However, many details of the landscape geometry and their influence on search efficiency still need to be fully understood. This paper numerically explores the path-connectedness of globally optimal control solutions forming the top manifold of the landscape. We randomly sample a plurality of optimal controls in the top manifold to assess the existence of a continuous path at the top of the landscape that connects two arbitrary optimal solutions. It is shown that for different quantum control objectives including state-to-state transition probabilities, observable expectation values and unitary transformations, such a continuous path can be readily found, implying that these top manifolds are fundamentally path-connected. The significance of the latter conjecture lies in seeking locations in the top manifold where an ancillary objective can also be optimized while maintaining the full optimality of the original objective that defined the landscape., Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures

Quantum computers promise to solve computational problems significantly faster than classical computers. These 'speed-ups' are achieved by utilizing a resource known as magic. Measuring the amount of magic used by a device allows us to quantify its potential computational power. Without this property, quantum computers are no faster than classical computers. Whether magic can be accurately measured on large-scale quantum computers has remained an open problem. To address this question, we introduce Pauli instability as a measure of magic and experimentally measure it on the IBM Eagle quantum processor. We prove that measuring large (i.e., extensive) quantities of magic is intractable. Our results suggest that one may only measure magic when a quantum computer does not provide a speed-up. We support our conclusions with both theoretical and experimental evidence. Our work illustrates the capabilities and limitations of quantum technology in measuring one of the most important resources in quantum computation., Comment: 5 pages

Hamiltonian encoding is a methodology for revealing the mechanism behind the dynamics governing controlled quantum systems. In this paper, following Mitra and Rabitz [Phys. Rev. A 67, 033407 (2003)], we define mechanism via pathways of eigenstates that describe the evolution of the system, where each pathway is associated with a complex-valued amplitude corresponding to a term in the Dyson series. The evolution of the system is determined by the constructive and destructive interference of these pathway amplitudes. Pathways with similar attributes can be grouped together into pathway classes. The amplitudes of pathway classes are computed by modulating the Hamiltonian matrix elements and decoding the subsequent evolution of the system rather than by direct computation of the individual terms in the Dyson series. The original implementation of Hamiltonian encoding was computationally intensive and became prohibitively expensive in large quantum systems. This paper presents two new encoding algorithms that calculate the amplitudes of pathway classes by using techniques from graph theory and algebraic topology to exploit patterns in the set of allowed transitions, greatly reducing the number of matrix elements that need to be modulated. These new algorithms provide an exponential decrease in both computation time and memory utilization with respect to the Hilbert space dimension of the system. To demonstrate the use of these techniques, they are applied to two illustrative state-to-state transition problems., Comment: 22 pages, 16 images across 13 figures

An approach is presented for robustness analysis and quantum (unitary) control synthesis based on the classic method of averaging. The result is a multicriterion optimization competing the nominal (uncertainty-free) fidelity with a well known robustness measure: the size of an interaction (error) Hamiltonian, essentially the first term in the Magnus expansion of an interaction unitary. Combining this with the fact that the topology of the control landscape at high fidelity is determined by the null space of the nominal fidelity Hessian, we arrive at a new two-stage algorithm. Once the nominal fidelity is sufficiently high, we approximate both the nominal fidelity and robustness measure as quadratics in the control increments. An optimal solution is obtained by solving a convex optimization for the control increments at each iteration to keep the nominal fidelity high and reduce the robustness measure. Additionally, by separating fidelity from the robustness measure, more flexibility is available for uncertainty modeling., Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures

The universal quantum homogeniser can transform a qubit from any state to any other state with arbitrary accuracy, using only unitary transformations to perform this task. Here we present an implementation of a finite quantum homogeniser using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), with a four-qubit system. We compare the homogenisation of a mixed state to a pure state, and the reverse process. After accounting for the effects of decoherence in the system, we find the experimental results to be consistent with the theoretical symmetry in how the qubit states evolve in the two cases. We analyse the implications of this symmetry by interpreting the homogeniser as a physical implementation of pure state preparation and information scrambling.

We consider the problem of selectively controlling couplings in a practical quantum processor with always-on interactions that are diagonal in the computational basis, using sequences of local NOT gates. This methodology is well-known in NMR implementations, but previous approaches do not scale efficiently for the general fully-connected Hamiltonian, where the complexity of finding time-optimal solutions makes them only practical up to a few tens of qubits. Given the rapid growth in the number of qubits in cutting-edge quantum processors, it is of interest to investigate the applicability of this control scheme to much larger scale systems with realistic restrictions on connectivity. Here we present an efficient scheme to find near time-optimal solutions that can be applied to engineered qubit arrays with local connectivity for any number of qubits, indicating the potential for practical quantum computing in such systems., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Shortened and clarified from previous version

Polar molecules are an emerging platform for quantum technologies based on their long-range electric dipole-dipole interactions, which open new possibilities for quantum information processing and the quantum simulation of strongly correlated systems. Here, we use magnetic and microwave fields to design a fast entangling gate with $>0.999$ fidelity and which is robust with respect to fluctuations in the trapping and control fields and to small thermal excitations. These results establish the feasibility to build a scalable quantum processor with a broad range of molecular species in optical-lattice and optical-tweezers setups., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

A powerful control method in experimental quantum computing is the use of spin echoes, employed to select a desired term in the system's internal Hamiltonian, while refocusing others. Here we address a more general problem, describing a method to not only turn on and off particular interactions but also to rescale their strengths so that we can generate any desired effective internal Hamiltonian. We propose an algorithm based on linear programming for achieving time-optimal rescaling solutions in fully coupled systems of tens of qubits, which can be modified to obtain near time-optimal solutions for rescaling systems with hundreds of qubits., Comment: Minor corrections and clarifications

The task of testing whether quantum theory applies to all physical systems and all scales requires considering situations where a quantum probe interacts with another system that need not obey quantum theory in full. Important examples include the cases where a quantum mass probes the gravitational field, for which a unique quantum theory of gravity does not yet exist, or a quantum field, such as light, interacts with a macroscopic system, such as a biological molecule, which may or may not obey unitary quantum theory. In this context a class of experiments has recently been proposed, where the non-classicality of a physical system that need not obey quantum theory (the gravitational field) can be tested indirectly by detecting whether or not the system is capable of entangling two quantum probes. Here we illustrate some of the subtleties of the argument, to do with the role of locality of interactions and of non-classicality, and perform proof-of-principle experiments illustrating the logic of the proposals, using a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance quantum computational platform with four qubits., Comment: Revised and extended

Since 2005 there has been a huge growth in the use of engineered control pulses to perform desired quantum operations in systems such as NMR quantum information processors. These approaches, which build on the original gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) algorithm, remain computationally intensive because of the need to calculate matrix exponentials for each time step in the control pulse. Here we discuss how the propagators for each time step can be approximated using the Trotter--Suzuki formula, and a further speed up achieved by avoiding unnecessary operations. The resulting procedure can give a substantial speed gain with negligible cost in propagator error, providing a more practical approach to pulse engineering., Comment: 5 pages, no figures; minor update to previous version. Submitted to Frontiers of Physics (formerly Frontiers of Physics in China)

Matrix exponentiation (ME) is widely used in various fields of science and engineering. For example, the unitary dynamics of quantum systems is described by exponentiation of Hamiltonian operators. However, despite a significant attention, the numerical evaluation of ME remains computationally expensive, particularly for large dimensions. Often this process becomes a bottleneck in algorithms requiring iterative evaluation of ME. Here we propose a method for approximating ME of a single operator with a bounded coefficient into a product of certain discrete operators. This approach, which we refer to as Rapid Exponentiation using Discrete Operators (REDO), is particularly efficient for iterating ME over large numbers. We describe REDO in the context of a quantum system with a constant as well as a time-dependent Hamiltonian, although in principle, it can be adapted in a more general setting. As concrete examples, we choose two applications. First, we incorporate REDO in optimal quantum control algorithms and report a speed-up of several folds over a wide range of system size. Secondly, we propose REDO for numerical simulations of quantum dynamics. In particular, we study exotic quantum freezing with noisy drive fields.

Cooling the qubit into a pure initial state is crucial for realizing fault-tolerant quantum information processing. Here we envisage a star-topology arrangement of reset and computation qubits for this purpose. The reset qubits cool or purify the computation qubit by transferring its entropy to a heat-bath with the help of a heat-bath algorithmic cooling procedure. By combining standard NMR methods with powerful quantum control techniques, we cool central qubits of two large star topology systems, with 13 and 37 spins respectively. We obtain polarization enhancements by a factor of over 24, and an associated reduction in the spin temperature from 298 K down to 12 K. Exploiting the enhanced polarization of computation qubit, we prepare combination-coherences of orders up to 15. By benchmarking the decay of these coherences we investigate the underlying noise process. Further, we also cool a pair of computation qubits and subsequently prepare them in an effective pure-state., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures; close to published version

A robust control over quantum dynamics is of paramount importance for quantum technologies. Many of the existing control techniques are based on smooth Hamiltonian modulations involving repeated calculations of basic unitaries resulting in time complexities scaling rapidly with the length of the control sequence. On the other hand, the bang-bang controls need one-time calculation of basic unitaries and hence scale much more efficiently. By employing a global optimization routine such as the genetic algorithm, it is possible to synthesize not only highly intricate unitaries, but also certain nonunitary operations. Here we demonstrate the unitary control through the first implementation of the optimal fixed-point quantum search algorithm in a three-qubit NMR system. More over, by combining the bang-bang pulses with the twirling process, we also demonstrate a nonunitary transformation of the thermal equilibrium state into an effective pure state in a five-qubit NMR system.

Benford's law is a statistical inference to predict the frequency of significant digits in naturally occurring numerical databases. In such databases this law predicts a higher occurrence of the digit 1 in the most significant place and decreasing occurrences to other larger digits. Although counter-intuitive at first sight, Benford's law has seen applications in a wide variety of fields like physics, earth-science, biology, finance etc. In this work, we have explored the use of Benford's law for various spectroscopic applications. Although, we use NMR signals as our databases, the methods described here may also be extended to other spectroscopic techniques. In particular, with the help of Benford analysis, we demonstrate the detection of weak NMR signals and spectral corrections. We also explore a potential application of Benford analysis in the image-processing of MRI data., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Benford's Law is an empirical law which predicts the frequency of significant digits in databases corresponding to various phenomena, natural or artificial. Although counter intuitive at the first sight, it predicts a higher occurrence of digit 1, and decreasing occurrences to other larger digits. Here we report the Benford analysis of various NMR databases and draw several interesting inferences. We observe that, in general, NMR signals follow Benford distribution in time-domain as well as in frequency domain. Our survey included NMR signals of various nuclear species in a wide variety of molecules in different phases, namely liquid, liquid-crystalline, and solid. We also studied the dependence of Benford distribution on NMR parameters such as signal to noise ratio, number of scans, pulse angles, and apodization. In this process we also find that, under certain circumstances, the Benford analysis can distinguish a genuine spectrum from a visually identical simulated spectrum. Further we find that chemical-shift databases and amplitudes of certain radio frequency pulses generated using optimal control techniques also satisfy Benford's law to a good extent., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures