Quantum simulator for electronical control of diamond spin qubits

Abstract

The world of quantum computing is still quickly developing and growing as it is searching for the best technology to implement quantum bits. One of these technologies is a diamond-based quantum computer using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. In order to sustain the mentioned growth, the limits of electronics as well as computer engineering need to be explored. Consequently, an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) defining the functionality of the NV centers must be constructed that, in turn, controls the electronics needed to operate the qubits within the NV
center.


In this thesis, we created a simulator to verify the functionality of the ISA and, more importantly, utilize the simulator to explore the capabilities of a diamond-based quantum computer. The simulator mimics the interaction between components and qubits in a diamond-based quantum computer and maps these interactions onto quantum mechanical instructions, such as qubit rotations. The simulator is implemented by modeling the electronics based on literature and creating interaction between the components using an event scheduler. The event scheduler is part of the NetSquid framework in which this simulator is built. The framework has models implemented to represent qubits and perform operations on qubits as well. The qubit representation model represents the electron and carbon nuclei qubits. The quantum operations are used to perform quantum mechanical operations on the qubits.


The simulator is tested for physical accuracy using single diamond tests from literature, namely magnetic biasing, rabi cycle checking, and charge resonance checks. The simulator returned an accurate value for the Larmor frequency and Rabi frequency meaning that it was close to the expected value. For example, setting the Larmor frequency to 1.72GHz and using the magnetic biasing sequence to determine the Larmor frequency resulted in the same 1.72GHz$value.
After single diamond tests have been performed, the control of multiple diamonds and their qubits is tested using a quantum algorithm, the surface-7 code. The simulator accurately mimics the expected behavior of the noiseless execution of the surface-7 code. The results of the simulator follow the trend of the expected values.


The final product of this thesis is a simulator that can accurately describe the interaction between an ISA and the components of the diamond-based system-architecture in the noiseless case. The simulator provides a setup for a future simulator with noise sources implemented, resulting in a simulator that can be used to determine the limits of electronic properties or to predict the outcome of lab experiments.