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Arrays of neutral atoms have emerged as promising platforms for quantum computing. Realization of high-fidelity two-qubit gates with robustness is currently a significant important task for large-scale operations. In this paper, we present a convenient approach for implementing a two-qubit controlled-phase gate using Rydberg blockade. We achieve the noncyclic geometric control with a single modulated pulse. As compared with the control scheme by cyclic evolution that determined by dynamical parameters, the robustness of the proposal against systematic errors will be remarkably improved due to the geometric characteristic. Importantly, the noncyclic geometric control reduces the gate time for small rotation angles and will be more insensitive to the decoherence effect. We accelerate the adiabatic control with the aid of shortcuts to adiabaticity to further shorten the operation time. We apply our protocol to the algorithm of quantum Fourier transformation to show the actual acceleration. Therefore, the proposed scheme will provide an analytical waveforms for arbitrary two-qubit gates and may have important use in the experiments of atomic arrays., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

The braiding operations of quantum states have attracted substantial attention due to their great potential for realizing topological quantum computations. In this paper, we show that a three-fold degenerate eigen subspace can be obtained in a four-level Hamiltonian which is the minimal physical system. Braiding operations are proposed to apply to dressed states in the subspace. The topology of the braiding diagram can be characterized through physical methods once that the sequential braiding pulses are adopted. We establish an equivalent relationship function between the permutation group and the output states where different output states correspond to different values of the function. The topological transition of the braiding happens when two operations overlap, which is detectable through the measurement of the function. Combined with the phase variation method, we can analyze the wringing pattern of the braiding. Therefore, the experimentally-feasible system provides a platform to investigate braiding dynamics, the SU(3) physics and the qutrit gates., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Non-Abelian gauge field (NAGF) plays a central role in understanding the geometrical and topological phenomena in physics. Here we experimentally induce a NAGF in the degenerate eigen subspace of a double-$\Lambda$ four-level atomic system. The non-Abelian nature of the gauge field is detected through the measurement of the non-commutativity of two successive evolution loops. Then we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel scheme to measure the NAGF through multi-loop evolution and robust holonomic quantum gates. The demonstrated scheme offers the advantage of detecting the NAGF with amplification through multi-loop evolution. Our results pave the way for an experimentally-feasible approach to achieving high-resolution and high-precision measurements of the gauge fields., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

Topological vacua are a family of degenerate ground states of Yang-Mills fields with zero field strength but nontrivial topological structures. They play a fundamental role in particle physics and quantum field theory, but have not yet been experimentally observed. Here we report the first theoretical proposal and experimental realization of synthetic topological vacua with a cloud of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. Our setup provides a promising platform to demonstrate the fundamental concept that a vacuum, rather than being empty, has rich spatial structures. The Hamiltonian for the vacuum of topological number n = 1 is synthesized and the related Hopf index is measured. The vacuum of topological number n = 2 is also realized, and we find that vacua with different topological numbers have distinctive spin textures and Hopf links. Our work opens up opportunities for exploring topological vacua and related long-sought-after instantons in tabletop experiments.

The topology of quantum systems has become a topic of great interest since the discovery of topological insulators. However, as a hallmark of the topological insulators, the spin Chern number has not yet been experimentally detected. The challenge to directly measure this topological invariant lies in the fact that this spin Chern number is defined based on artificially constructed wavefunctions. Here we experimentally mimic the celebrated Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model with cold atoms, and then measure the spin Chern number with the linear response theory. We observe that, although the Chern number for each spin component is ill defined, the spin Chern number measured by their difference is still well defined when both energy and spin gaps are non-vanished., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

Fast and robust quantum gates is the cornerstone of fault-tolerance quantum computation. In this paper, we propose to achieve quantum gates based on non-cyclic geometric evolution. Dynamical phase during the evolution is cancelled by spin-echo process and the adiabatic control can be sped up through shortcut to adiabatic manner. Different from geometric gates based on cyclic evolution, the superiority of non-cyclic scheme is that the operation time is proportional to the rotation angle (but not the geometric phase) of quantum state. Therefore, the non-cyclic scheme becomes fairly fast in the case of quantum gates with small rotation angle which will be more insensitive to the decoherence and leakage to the states outside the computational basis. The proposed scheme is also robust against random noise due to the geometric characteristic of projective Hilbert space. Since the refined proposed scheme is fast and robust, it is an particularly suitable way to manipulate the physical systems with weak nonlinearity, such as superconucting systems., Comment: 6 pages, 4figures

High-fidelity and robust coherent population transfer is a major challenge in coherent quantum control. Different from the well known adiabatic condition, we present a rigorous adiabatic condition that is inspired by the idea of the Landau-Zener tunneling. Based on this, we propose a coherent population transfer approach, which just needs only one control parameter and depends on the eigenvalues of the systems. Compared to other approaches, such as fast quasiadiabatic dynamics, shortcut to adiabatic passage, we numerically demonstrate that our approach can provide a more high-fidelity and more robustness coherent population transfer without affecting the speed. In short, our approach opens a new way to further increase the fidelity and the robustness of coherent population transfer. Moreover, it may be generalized to complex quantum systems where the exact expressions of eigenstates are difficult to obtain or the paremeters of systems are difficult to simultaneously drive.

We reveal a novel topological property of the exceptional points in a two-level parity-time symmetric system and then propose a scheme to detect the topological exceptional points in the system, which is embedded in a larger Hilbert space constructed by a four-level cold atomic system. We show that a tunable parameter in the presented system for simulating the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian can be tuned to swept the eigenstates through the exceptional points in parameter space. The non-trivial Berry phases of the eigenstates obtained in this loop from the exceptional points can be measured by the atomic interferometry. Since the proposed operations and detection are experimentally feasible, our scheme may pave a promising way to explore the novel properties of non-Hermitian systems.

We propose a feasible scheme to implement a universal set of quantum gates based on geometric phases and superadiabatic quantum control. Consolidating the advantages of both strategies, the proposed quantum gates are robust and fast. The diamond nitrogen-vacancy center system is adopted as a typical example to illustrate the scheme. We show that these gates can be realized in a simple two-level configuration by appropriately controlling the amplitude, phase, and frequency of just one microwave field. The gate's robust and fast features are confirmed by comparing the fidelity of the proposed superadiabatic geometric phase (controlled-PHASE) gate with those of two other kinds of phase (controlled-PHASE) gates., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

Accurate control of a quantum system is a fundamental requirement in many areas of modern science ranging from quantum information processing to high-precision measurements. A significantly important goal in quantum control is to prepare a desired state as fast as possible with sufficiently high fidelity allowed by available resources and experimental constraints. Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is a robust way to realize high-fidelity state transfer but it requires a sufficiently long operation time to satisfy the adiabatic criteria. We here theoretically propose and then experimentally demonstrate a shortcut-to-adiabatic protocol to speed up the STIRAP. By modifying the shapes of the Raman pulses, we experimentally realize a fast and high-fidelity stimulated Raman shortcut-to-adiabatic passage that is robust against control parameter variations. The all-optical, robust, and fast protocol demonstrated here provides an efficient and practical way to control quantum systems., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, comments and suggestion are welcome