Robust Dynamical Decoupling for the Manipulation of a Spin Network via a Single Spin

Abstract: High-fidelity control of quantum systems is crucial for quantum information processing, but is often limited by perturbations from the environment and imperfections in the applied control fields. Here, we investigate the combination of dynamical decoupling (DD) and robust optimal control (ROC) to address this problem. In this combination, ROC is employed to find robust shaped pulses, wherein the directional derivatives of the controlled dynamics with respect to control errors are reduced to a desired order. Then, we incorporate ROC pulses into DD sequences, achieving a remarkable improvement of robustness against multiple error channels. We demonstrate this method in the example of manipulating nuclear spin bath via an electron spin in the NV center system. Simulation results indicate that ROC based DD sequences outperform the state-of-the-art robust DD sequences. Our work has implications for robust quantum control on near-term noisy quantum devices.