Chaotic behaviour is ubiquitous and plays an important part in most fields of science. In classical physics, chaos is characterized by hypersensitivity of the time evolution of a system to initial conditions. Quantum mechanics does not permit a similar definition owing in part to the uncertainty principle, and in part to the Schrödinger equation, which preserves the overlap between quantum states. This fundamental disconnect poses a challenge to quantum-classical correspondence, and has motivated a long-standing search for quantum signatures of classical chaos. Here we present the experimental realization of a common paradigm for quantum chaos-the quantum kicked top- and the observation directly in quantum phase space of dynamics that have a chaotic classical counterpart. Our system is based on the combined electronic and nuclear spin of a single atom and is therefore deep in the quantum regime; nevertheless, we find good correspondence between the quantum dynamics and classical phase space structures. Because chaos is inherently a dynamical phenomenon, special significance attaches to dynamical signatures such as sensitivity to perturbation or the generation of entropy and entanglement, for which only indirect evidence has been available. We observe clear differences in the sensitivity to perturbation in chaotic versus regular, non-chaotic regimes, and present experimental evidence for dynamical entanglement as a signature of chaos.

We demonstrate improved operation of exchange-coupled semiconductor quantum dots by substantially reducing the sensitivity of exchange operations to charge noise. The method involves biasing a double dot symmetrically between the charge-state anticrossings, where the derivative of the exchange energy with respect to gate voltages is minimized. Exchange remains highly tunable by adjusting the tunnel coupling. We find that this method reduces the dephasing effect of charge noise by more than a factor of 5 in comparison to operation near a charge-state anticrossing, increasing the number of observable exchange oscillations in our qubit by a similar factor. Performance also improves with exchange rate, favoring fast quantum operations. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.110402 Gated semiconductor quantum dots are a leading candidate for quantum information processing due to their high speed, density, and compatibility with mature fabrication technologies [1,2]. Quantum dots are formed by spatially confining individual electrons using a combination of material interfaces and nanoscale metallic gates. Although several quantized degrees of freedom are available [3][4][5], the electron spin is often employed as a qubit due to its long coherence time [6,7]. Spin-spin coupling may be controlled via the kinetic exchange interaction, which has the benefit of short range and electrical controllability. Numerous qubit proposals use exchange, including as a two-qubit gate between ESR-addressed spins [8], a single axis of control in a two dot system also employing gradient magnetic fields [9] or spin-orbit couplings [10], or as a means of full qubit control on a restricted subspace of at least three coupled spins [11][12][13]. However, since exchange relies on electron motion, it is susceptible to electric field fluctuations, or charge noise. Limiting the consequence of this noise is critical to attaining performance of exchange-based qubits adequate for quantum information processing.Charge noise in semiconductor quantum dots may originate from a variety of sources including electric defects at interfaces and in dielectrics [14]. These defects typically result in electric fields that exhibit an approximate 1=f noise spectral density. Conventional routes for reducing charge noise include improving materials and interfaces [15] and dynamical decoupling [16][17][18][19]. In this Letter, rather than addressing the microscopic origins or detailed spectrum of charge noise, we introduce a "symmetric" mode of operation where the exchange interaction is less susceptible to that noise. This is done by biasing the device to a regime where the strength of the exchange interaction is first-order insensitive to dot chemical potential fluctuations but is still controllable by modulating the interdot tunnel barrier. This dramatically reduces the effects of charge noise.The principle of symmetric operation can be understood by treating charge noise as equivalent to voltage fluctuations on confinement gates. This approximation is valid when materi...

Three coupled quantum dots in isotopically purified silicon enable all-electrical qubit control with long coherence time.

Quantum computation requires qubits that satisfy often-conflicting criteria, including scalable control and long-lasting coherence [1]. One approach to creating a suitable qubit is to operate in an encoded subspace of several physical qubits. Though such encoded qubits may be particularly susceptible to leakage out of their computational subspace, they can be insensitive to certain noise processes [2, 3] and can also allow logical control with a single type of entangling interaction [4] while maintaining favorable features of the underlying physical system. Here we demonstrate a qubit encoded in a subsystem of three coupled electron spins confined in gated, isotopically enhanced silicon quantum dots [4, 5]. Using a modified "blind" randomized benchmarking protocol that determines both computational and leakage errors [6, 7], we show that unitary operations have an average total error of 0.35%, with 0.17% of that coming from leakage driven by interactions with substrate nuclear spins. This demonstration utilizes only the voltage-controlled exchange interaction for qubit manipulation and highlights the operational benefits of encoded subsystems, heralding the realization of high-quality encoded multi-qubit operations [4, 8].Electrons trapped in silicon heterostructures have many attractive features, including very long coherence times in isotopically enriched material [9, 10] and compatibility with standard fabrication techniques. Singlespin qubits have recently demonstrated high-fidelity RFcontrolled single-qubit operations [10, 11] and two-qubit gates using the exchange interaction [12][13][14]. However, using RF signals for single-qubit control requires a large, stable magnetic field and introduces challenges with crosstalk. Fortunately, electron spins are particularly well-suited to forming encoded qubits. Two coupled electron spins can be operated at near-zero magnetic field as a "singlet-triplet" qubit [15,16]. That qubit is insensitive to uniform magnetic field fluctuations but still requires a magnetic field gradient for universal control. Three coupled electrons [17] can form a qubit with a tunable electric dipole moment, which could enhance RF selectivity, or the exchange-only qubit, which can be universally controlled using only the exchange interaction and does not require synchronization of gate operations with a local oscillator. Exchange is highly local and can be accurately controlled with a large on-off ratio using only fast voltage pulses. The combination of these features makes the exchange-only qubit especially attractive b X2

We implement arbitrary maps between pure states in the 16-dimensional Hilbert space associated with the ground electronic manifold of ^{133}Cs. This is accomplished by driving atoms with phase modulated radio-frequency and microwave fields, using modulation waveforms found via numerical optimization and designed to work robustly in the presence of imperfections. We evaluate the performance of a sample of randomly chosen state maps by randomized benchmarking, obtaining an average fidelity >99%. Our protocol advances state-of-the-art quantum control and has immediate applications in quantum metrology and tomography.

The need to perform quantum state tomography on ever larger systems has spurred a search for methods that yield good estimates from incomplete data. We study the performance of compressed sensing (CS) and least squares (LS) estimators in a fast protocol based on continuous measurement on an ensemble of cesium atomic spins. Both efficiently reconstruct nearly pure states in the 16dimensional ground manifold, reaching average fidelitiesFCS = 0.92 andFLS = 0.88 using similar amounts of incomplete data. Surprisingly, the main advantage of CS in our protocol is an increased robustness to experimental imperfections.PACS numbers: 03.65. Wj, 42.50.Dv, Recovering a full description of a complex system from limited information is a central problem in science and engineering. In physics one often seeks to estimate an unknown quantum state based on measurement data [1], generally a formidable challenge for large systems given that O(d 2 ) real parameters are needed to describe arbitrary states in a d-dimensional Hilbert space. In quantum information science, however, the states of interest are nearly pure and can be described by O(d) parameters. Algorithms that make use of this prior information to obtain good estimates from a reduced number of measurements fall under the general heading of compressed sensing [2], a family of techniques used in signal processing tasks that range from movie recommendation to earthquake analysis. Gross et al. [3,4] have developed one such algorithm that gives good estimates of nearly pure quantum states in a d-dimensional Hilbert space from the expectation values of O(d log d) orthogonal observables, a substantial saving when d is large. This algorithm was recently benchmarked against a standard maximum likelihood estimator in an experiment with photonic qubits and the two were found to yield similar results [5]. Generalization to process tomography has led to similar improvements when the process is close to unitary [6].In this work we study the laboratory performance of quantum state reconstruction based on compressed sensing (CS) and least-squares [7] (LS) estimators in the context of continuous measurement. Our physical testbed consists of the 16-dimensional hyperfine manifold of magnetic sublevels in the electronic ground state of atomic cesium. The data required for quantum tomography is gathered by performing a weak (nonprojective) continuous measurement on an ensemble of atoms while dynamically evolving their state with known driving fields [8][9][10][11]. This approach differs substantially from conventional quantum tomography in that the measurement record contains information about the expectation values of a continuum of nonorthogonal observables instead FIG. 1.(Color online) Schematic of the experiment. An ensemble of identically prepared cesium atoms is probed with an optical beam and polarimeter to obtain a continuous measurement of the spin observable fz in the f = 3 hyperfine state. The atoms sit at the center of a plexiglass cube that supports coil pairs used to apply bias an...

Many experiments involving cold and ultracold atomic gases require very precise control of magnetic fields that couple to and drive the atomic spins. Examples include quantum control of atomic spins, quantum control and quantum simulation in optical lattices, and studies of spinor Bose condensates. This makes accurate cancellation of the (generally time dependent) background magnetic field a critical factor in such experiments. We describe a technique that uses the atomic spins themselves to measure DC and AC components of the background field independently along three orthogonal axes, with a resolution of a few tens of µG in a bandwidth of ∼ 1 kHz. Once measured, the background field can be cancelled with three pairs of compensating coils driven by arbitrary waveform generators. In our laboratory, the magnetic field environment is sufficiently stable for the procedure to reduce the field along each axis to less than ∼50 µG rms, corresponding to a suppression of the AC part by about one order of magnitude. This suggests our approach can provide access to a new low-field regime in cold-atom experiments.

The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) views nearly every point on the sky once every 102 minutes and can detect point sources as faint as R~10 th magnitude. Therefore, SMEI can detect or provide upper limits for the optical afterglow from gamma-ray bursts in the tens of minutes after the burst when different shocked regions may emit optically. Here we provide upper limits for 58 bursts between