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| Author(s): |
Frederico Borges de Brito
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin |
| Defense date: | 2006-02-20 |
| Examining board members: |
Amir Ordacgi Caldeira;
Maria Carolina Nemes;
A. F. R. de Toledo Piza;
Marcos César de Oliveira;
José Antonio Roversi
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| Advisor: | Amir Ordacgi Caldeira |
| Abstract | |
The purpose of this thesis was to study the process of loss of quantum coherence, named decoherence, in condensed matter systems cited in the literature as possible candidates for the implementation of a quantum bit (qubit). Decoherence occurs due to the inevitable coupling of the system of interest to its environment. Once the quantum superposition states are the key to perform operations based on quantum logic, these processes limit, or even hinder, the utilization of some of those systems in the physical realization of the quantum computer. Relatively to its competitors, condensed matter systems usually present a higher degree of difficulty as one tries to minimize the coupling between the qubit and its environment, which, generally, worsens its coherence time observations. On the other hand, these devices present advantages which stimulates its study, such as: the possibility of construction of several coupled qubits and the possibility of manipulating each one individually, using conventional engineering techniques. The systems studied in this thesis were: superconducting qubits with Josephson junctions; and electronic spins quantum dots. Aiming at a complete investigation of the first system, we developed the Caldeira-Leggett model for the case of several dissipation sources coupled to the qubit. With the prescription presented here, we determine the number of oscillator baths needed to the correct description of the noise sources, and verify that the total relaxation and decoherence rates are not necessarily the sum of the individual rates relative to each source. Moreover, we applied this formalism to the study of a ux qubit currently under investigation. For the quantum dot qubits, we employed the effective bath approach to treat the dynamics of the spin of the electron localized in the quantum dot. As a result, we found analytical solutions for the dynamics of the average value of each one of the spin components s x,y,z . In both cases, we indicated the best operational regime of each qubit and gave estimates of the relaxation and decoherence times (AU) | |