Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-25-2014

Publication Title

New Journal of Physics

Department

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

We propose dynamical control schemes for Hamiltonian simulation in many-body quantum systems that avoid instantaneous control operations and rely solely on realistic bounded-strength control Hamiltonians. Each simulation protocol consists of periodic repetitions of a basic control block, constructed as a modification of an 'Eulerian decoupling cycle,' that would otherwise implement a trivial (zero) target Hamiltonian. For an open quantum system coupled to an uncontrollable environment, our approach may be employed to engineer an effective evolution that simulates a target Hamiltonian on the system while suppressing unwanted decoherence to the leading order, thereby allowing for dynamically corrected simulation. We present illustrative applications to both closed- and open-system simulation settings, with emphasis on simulation of non-local (two-body) Hamiltonians using only local (one-body) controls. In particular, we provide simulation schemes applicable to Heisenberg-coupled spin chains exposed to general linear decoherence, and show how to simulate Kitaevʼs honeycomb lattice Hamiltonian starting from Ising-coupled qubits, as potentially relevant to the dynamical generation of a topologically protected quantum memory. Additional implications for quantum information processing are discussed.

DOI

10.1088/1367-2630/16/4/045021

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