Decoherence control: Universal protection of two-qubit states and two-qubit gates using continuous driving fields

Abstract: A field configuration utilizing local static and oscillating fields is constructed to achieve universal (but low-order) protection of two-qubit states. That is, two-qubit states can be protected against arbitrary system-environment coupling if the driving field frequency, as compared with the cutoff frequency of the environment, is sufficiently large. Equally important, we show that it is possible to construct driving fields to protect two-qubit entangling gates against decoherence, without assuming any particular form of system-environment coupling. Using a non-Markovian master equation, we further demonstrate the effectiveness of our continuous dynamical decoupling fields in protecting entanglement and the excellent performance of protected two-qubit gates in generating entanglement. The results are complementary to current studies of entanglement protection using universal dynamical decoupling pulse sequences.