Simulating open quantum dynamics on an NMR quantum processor using the Sz.-Nagy dilation algorithm

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental simulation of open quantum system dynamics on an NMR quantum processor using the Sz.-Nagy dilation algorithm, which efficiently simulates arbitrary-dimensional processes with a single ancilla qubit.

Contribution

It experimentally implements the Sz.-Nagy dilation algorithm for simulating open quantum dynamics on an NMR platform, including process tomography for validation.

Findings

Successful simulation of phase damping channels

Implementation of magnetic field gradient pulse simulation

High fidelity quantum process reconstruction

Abstract

We experimentally implement the Sz.-Nagy dilation algorithm to simulate open quantum dynamics on an nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum processor. The Sz.-Nagy algorithm enables the simulation of the dynamics of arbitrary-dimensional open quantum systems, using only a single ancilla qubit. We experimentally simulate the action of two non-unitary processes, namely, a phase damping channel acting independently on two qubits and a magnetic field gradient pulse (MFGP) acting on an ensemble of two coupled nuclear spin-1/2 particles. To evaluate the quality of the experimentally simulated quantum process, we perform convex optimization-based full quantum process tomography to reconstruct the quantum process from the experimental data and compare it with the target quantum process to be simulated.