Nonperturbative leakage elimination for a logical qubit encoded in a mechanical oscillator

Abstract

Continuous-variable (CV) systems are attracting increasing attention in the realization of universal quantum computation. Several recent experiments have shown the feasibility of using CV systems to, e.g., encode a qubit into a trapped-ion mechanical oscillator and perform logic gates [C. Flühmann, Nature (London) 566, 513 (2019)NATUAS0028-083610.1038/s41586-019-0960-6]. The essential next step is to protect the encoded qubit from quantum decoherence, e.g., the motional decoherence due to the interaction between a mechanical oscillator and its environment. Here we propose a scheme to suppress quantum decoherence of a single-mode harmonic oscillator used to encode qubits by introducing a nonperturbative leakage elimination operator (LEO) specifically designed for this purpose. Remarkably, our nonperturbative LEO can be used to analytically derive exact equations of motion without approximations. It also allows us to prove that the effectiveness of these LEOs depends only on the integral of the pulse sequence in the time domain, while details of the pulse shape do not make a significant difference when the time period is chosen appropriately. This control method can be applied to a system at an arbitrary temperature and arbitrary system-bath coupling strength, which makes it extremely useful for general open quantum systems.