Coherent feedback control of a single qubit in diamond

Abstract

Engineering desired operations on qubits subjected to the deleterious effects of their environment is a critical task in quantum information processing, quantum simulation and sensing. The most common approach is to rely on open-loop quantum control techniques, including optimal control algorithms, based on analytical or numerical solutions, Lyapunov design and Hamiltonian engineering. An alternative strategy, inspired by the success of classical control, is feedback control. Because of the complications introduced by quantum measurement, closed-loop control is less pervasive in the quantum settings and, with exceptions, its experimental implementations have been mainly limited to quantum optics experiments. Here we implement a feedback control algorithm with a solid-state spin qubit system associated with the Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) centre in diamond, using coherent feedback [9] to overcome limitations of measurement-based feedback, and show that it can protect the qubit against intrinsic dephasing noise for milliseconds.