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Maunz, Peter

Publications and source records attributed to Maunz, Peter.

Precise micromotion compensation of a tilted ion chain

Excess micromotion can be a substantial source of errors in trapped-ion based quantum processors and clocks due to the sensitivity of the internal states of the ion to external fields and motion. This problem can be fixed by compensating background electric fields in order to position ions at the RF node and minimize their driven micromotion. Here we describe techniques for compensating ion chains in scalable surface ion traps. These traps are capable of cancelling stray electric fields with fine spatial resolution in order to compensate multiple closely spaced ions due to their large number of relatively small control electrodes. We demonstrate a technique that compensates an ion chain to better than 5 V/m and within 0.1 degrees of chain rotation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Detecting and tracking drift in quantum information processors

Abstract If quantum information processors are to fulfill their potential, the diverse errors that affect them must be understood and suppressed. But errors typically fluctuate over time, and the most widely used tools for characterizing them assume static error modes and rates. This mismatch can cause unheralded failures, misidentified error modes, and wasted experimental effort. Here, we demonstrate a spectral analysis technique for resolving time dependence in quantum processors. Our method is fast, simple, and statistically sound. It can be applied to time-series data from any quantum processor experiment. We use data from simulations and trapped-ion qubit experiments to show how our method can resolve time dependence when applied to popular characterization protocols, including randomized benchmarking, gate set tomography, and Ramsey spectroscopy. In the experiments, we detect instability and localize its source, implement drift control techniques to compensate for this instability, and then demonstrate that the instability has been suppressed.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Diagnosing and Destroying Non-Markovian Noise

Nearly every protocol used to analyze the performance of quantum information processors is based on an assumption that the errors experienced by the device during logical operations are constant in time and are insensitive to external contexts. This assumption is pervasive, rarely stated, and almost always wrong. Quantum devices that do behave this way are termed "Markovian:' but nearly every system we have ever probed has displayed drift or crosstalk or memory effects they are all non-Markovian. Strong non-Markovianity introduces spurious effects in characterization protocols and violates assumptions of the fault-tolerance threshold theorems. This SAND report details a three year laboratory-directed research and development (LDRD) project entitled, "Diagnosing and Destroying non-Markovian Noise in Quantum Information Processors." This program was initiated to build tools to study non-Markovian dynamics and quantum systems and develop robust methodologies for eliminating it. The program achieved a number of notable successes, including the first statistically rigorous protocol for identifying and characterizing drift in quantum systems, a formalism for modeling memory effects in quantum devices, and the successful suppression of drift in a Sandia trapped-ion quantum processor.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗