Descripció del projecte
The ability to prepare and manipulate quantum systems in a precise and controlled manner is a necessity in the deployment of quantum technologies. Prominent applications of this kind of technology typically require, in their standard formulation, to craft very specific highly-entangled pure states, like quantum metrology, or to implement high-fidelity (unitary) logic gates, like quantum computing. These protocols are typically designed in a framework of isolated quantum systems, pure states and unitary evolution. However, the reality of quantum experiments includes noise and decoherence, phenomena that deeply hinder the performance of quantum protocols and quickly disable any potential quantum advantage over classical methods.
Quantum control techniques have been developed to handle such challenges, bridging the gap between theory and experiments, and mitigating the effect of noise by finding the fastest implementation possible. This thesis project’s primary objective is to develop novel quantum control techniques that go beyond the state-of-the-art by, instead of mitigating noise, incorporating the noisy and dissipative nature of quantum experiments into their design.
We will approach this overarching research goal in two phases. First, by focusing on concrete quantum information processing tasks that use mixed (instead of pure) states as a resource. An example that will be explored is equilibrium quantum metrology, that uses robust thermal states to perform supraclassical parameter estimation. Preparing such states via letting the system thermalize itself is a process that may take an extremely long time, hence one that will certainly benefit from time-optimal quantum control methods that boost its speed and efficiency. In a second phase, we will develop a general framework for quantum control that allows to target the preparation of arbitrary mixed states and the fast implementation of quantum channels beyond the unitary case, allowing us to engineer induced dynamics that intrinsically compensate and/or leverage stochastic noise processes.
If possible, the candidate will implement the resulting theory within an experimental setup consisting of a cold atom BEC. Alternatively, we may consider using a platform based on an NV-center-like system (e.g., CaO).
Beyond the above objectives, the candidate will be offered the opportunity to be involved in experimental work related with the fabrication and characterization of novel nanomaterials that are currently being explored at IDEADED.
