Dynamics of coupled spins in the white- and quantum-noise regime

We study the dynamics of dissipative spins for general spin-spin coupling. We investigate the population dynamics and relaxation of the purity in the white noise regime, in which exact results are available. Inter alia, we find distinct reduction of decoherence and slowdown of purity decay around degeneracy points. We also determine in analytic form the one-phonon exchange contribution to decoherence and relaxation in the ohmic quantum noise regime valid down to zero temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Decoherence of Flux Qubits Coupled to Electronic Circuits

On the way to solid-state quantum computing, overcoming decoherence is the central issue. In this contribution, we discuss the modeling of decoherence of a superonducting flux qubit coupled to dissipative electronic circuitry. We discuss its impact on single qubit decoherence rates and on the performance of two-qubit gates. These results can be used for designing decoherence-optimal setups.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Advances in Solid State Physics, Vol. 43 (2003

Macroscopic Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs in superconducting circuits

We propose an efficient approach to prepare Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs in currently existing Josephson nanocircuits with capacitive couplings. In these fixed coupling circuits, two-qubit logic gates could be easily implemented while, strictly speaking, single-qubit gates cannot be easily realized. For a known two-qubit state, conditional single-qubit operation could still be designed to evolve only the selected qubit and keep the other qubit unchanged; the rotation of the selected qubit depends on the state of the other one. These conditional single-qubit operations allow to deterministically generate the well-known Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs, represented by EPR-Bell (or Bell) states. Quantum-state tomography is further proposed to experimentally confirm the generation of these states. The decays of the prepared EPR pairs are analyzed using numerical simulations. Possible application of the generated EPR pairs to test Bell's Inequality is also discussed.Comment: small changes in tex

Decoherence and Entanglement Dynamics of Coupled Qubits

We study the entanglement dynamics and relaxation properties of a system of two interacting qubits in the two cases (I) two independent bosonic baths and (II) one common bath, at temperature T. The entanglement dynamics is studied in terms of the concurrence C (t) between the two spins and of the von Neumann entropy S(t) with respect to the bath, as a function of time. We prove that the system does thermalize. In the case (II) of a single bath, the existence of a decoherence-free (DFS) subspace makes entanglement dynamics very rich. We show that when the system is initially in a state with a component in the DFS the relaxation time is surprisingly long, showing the existence of semi-decoherence free subspaces. The equilibrium state in this case is not the Gibbs state. The entanglement dynamics for the single bath case is also studied as a function of temperature, coupling strength with the environment and strength of tunneling coupling. The case of the mixed state is finally shown and discussed.Comment: improved version with all the details and study in function of temperature, coupling strengths and the study of the mixed state cas

Improving the purity of one- and two-qubit gates by AC fields

We investigate the influence of AC driving fields on the coherence properties of one- and two-qubit gate operations. In both cases, we find that for suitable driving parameters, the gate purity improves significantly. A mapping of the time-dependent system-bath model to an effective static model provides analytical results. The resulting purity loss compares favorably with numerical results.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, style file include

Decoherence dynamics of a qubit coupled to a quantum two-level system

We study the decoherence dynamics of a qubit coupled to a quantum two-level system (TLS) in addition to its weak coupling to a background environment. We analyze the different regimes of behaviour that arise as the values of the different parameters are varied. We classify those regimes as two weak-coupling regimes, which differ by the relation between the qubit and TLS decoherence times, and a strong-coupling one. We also find analytic expressions describing the decoherence rates in the weak-coupling regimes, and we verify numerically that those expressions have a rather wide range of validity. Along with obtaining the above-mentioned results, we address the questions of qubit-TLS entanglement and the additivity of multiple TLS contributions. We also discuss the transition from weak to strong coupling as the parameters are varied, and we numerically determine the location of the boundary between the two regimes.Comment: 9 pages (two-column), 3 figure