Topological Dynamical Decoupling with Complete Pulse Error Cancellation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new family of topologically inspired dynamical decoupling sequences, Tn, that achieve perfect pulse error cancellation and robustness without numerical optimization, demonstrated on superconducting qubits.

Contribution

The authors develop Tn sequences that provide exact pulse error cancellation to all orders with analytic phases, requiring no numerical optimization, and demonstrate their effectiveness on real quantum hardware.

Findings

Tn sequences achieve complete pulse error cancellation.

Experimental results show population plateaus matching theoretical predictions.

Sequences exhibit robustness to detuning and pulse imperfections.

Abstract

Systematic pulse errors remain a major obstacle to high-fidelity quantum control. We present a new family of dynamical decoupling sequences, denoted Tn, that achieve exact cancellation of pulse area errors to all orders by enforcing a simple topological phase condition. Unlike some conventional composite sequences, Tn requires no numerical optimization and admits closed-form analytic phases for arbitrary sequence length, while providing substantial robustness to detuning as well. We demonstrate these sequences on superconducting transmon qubits from both IBM Quantum processor ibm_torino and IQM Quantum processor Garnet, observing population plateaus in close agreement with theory. These results establish a new paradigm for hardware-efficient error suppression, broadly applicable across quantum computing, sensing, and memory platforms.