Being able to quantify the level of coherent control in a proposed device implementing a quantum information processor (QIP) is an important task for both comparing different devices and assessing a device's prospects with regards to achieving fault-tolerant quantum control. We implement in a liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance QIP the randomized benchmarking protocol presented by Knill et al (PRA 77: 012307 (2008)). We report an error per randomized 2π pulse of 1.3±0.1×10−4 with a single qubit QIP and show an experimentally relevant error model where the randomized benchmarking gives a signature fidelity decay which is not possible to interpret as a single error per gate. We explore and experimentally investigate multi-qubit extensions of this protocol and report an average error rate for one and two qubit gates of 4.7±0.3×10−3 for a three qubit QIP. We estimate that these error rates are still not decoherence limited and thus can be improved with modifications to the control hardware and software.
@article{arxiv.0808.3973,
title = {Randomized benchmarking of single and multi-qubit control in liquid-state NMR quantum information processing},
author = {C. A. Ryan and M. Laforest and R. Laflamme},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0808.3973},
year = {2009}
}