An Open-System Quantum Simulator with Trapped Ions

Julio T. Barreiro*,1, Markus Muller*,2,3, Philipp Schindler1, Daniel Nigg1, Thomas Monz1,

Michael Chwalla1,2, Markus Hennrich1, Christian F. Roos1,2, Peter Zoller2,3 and Rainer Blatt1,21Institut fur Experimentalphysik, Universitat Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

2Institut fur Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation,Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Technikerstr. 21A, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

3Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Universitat Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria* These authors contributed equally to this work.

The control of quantum systems is of fundamental scientific interest and promisespowerful applications and technologies. Impressive progress has been achieved in iso-lating the systems from the environment and coherently controlling their dynamics,as demonstrated by the creation and manipulation of entanglement in various physi-cal systems. However, for open quantum systems, engineering the dynamics of manyparticles by a controlled coupling to an environment remains largely unexplored. Herewe report the first realization of a toolbox for simulating an open quantum systemwith up to five qubits. Using a quantum computing architecture with trapped ions, wecombine multi-qubit gates with optical pumping to implement coherent operations anddissipative processes. We illustrate this engineering by the dissipative preparation ofentangled states, the simulation of coherent many-body spin interactions and the quan-tum non-demolition measurement of multi-qubit observables. By adding controlleddissipation to coherent operations, this work offers novel prospects for open-systemquantum simulation and computation.

Every quantum system is inevitably coupled to itssurrounding environment. Significant progress has beenmade in isolating systems from their enviroment and co-herently controlling the dynamics of several qubits [1–4].These achievements have enabled the realization of high-fidelity quantum gates, the implementation of small-scalequantum computing and communication devices as wellas the measurement-based probabilistic preparation ofentangled states, in atomic [5, 6], photonic [7] and solid-state setups [8–10]. In particular, successful demonstra-tions of quantum simulators [11, 12], which allow oneto mimic and study the dynamics of complex quantumsystems, have been reported [13].

In contrast, controlling the more general dynamics ofopen systems amounts to engineering both the Hamilto-nian time evolution of the system as well as the couplingto the environment. Although open-system dynamics ina many-body or multi-qubit system are typically associ-ated with decoherence [14–16], the ability to design dissi-pation can be a useful resource. For example, controlleddissipation allows the preparation of a desired entangledstate from an arbitrary state [17–19] or an enhanced sen-sitivity for precision measurements [20]. In a broadercontext, by combining suitably chosen coherent and dis-sipative time steps, one can realize the most general non-unitary open-system evolution of a many-particle sys-tem. This engineering of the system-environment cou-pling generalizes the concept of Hamiltonian quantumsimulation to open quantum systems. In addition, thisengineering enables the dissipative preparation and ma-nipulation of many-body states and quantum phases [21],and also quantum computation based on dissipation [22].

Here we provide the first experimental demonstration

of a complete toolbox, through coherent and dissipativemanipulations of a multi-qubit system, to control the dy-namics of open systems. In a string of trapped ions,each ion encoding a qubit, we subdivide the qubits into“system” and “environment”. The system-environmentcoupling is then engineered through the universal set ofquantum operations available in ion-trap quantum com-puters [23, 24] and a dissipative mechanism based on op-tical pumping.

We first illustrate this engineering by dissipativelypreparing a Bell state in a 2+1 ion system, such thatan initially fully mixed state is pumped into a given Bellstate. Similarly, with 4+1 ions, we also dissipatively pre-pare a 4-qubit GHZ-state, which can be regarded as aminimal instance of Kitaev’s toric code [25]. Besides thedissipative elements, we show coherent n-body interac-tions by implementing the fundamental building block for4-spin interactions. In addition, we demonstrate a read-out of n-particle observables in a non-destructive waywith a quantum-nondemolition (QND) measurement of a4-qubit stabilizer operator. Altogether, our work demon-strates all essential coherent and dissipative elements forcontrolling general open-system dynamics.

OPEN-SYSTEM QUANTUM DYNAMICS ANDBELL-STATE “COOLING”

The dynamics of an open quantum system S coupledto an environment E can be described by the unitarytransformation ρSE 7→ UρSEU

†, with ρSE the joint den-sity matrix of the composite system S + E. Thus, thereduced density operator of the system will evolve as

arX

iv:1

104.

1146

v1 [

quan

t-ph

] 6

Apr

201

1

2

ρS = TrEUρSEU†. The time evolution of the system can

also be described by a completely positive Kraus map

ρS 7→ E(ρS) =∑

k

EkρSE†k (1)

with Ek operation elements satisfying∑k E†kEk = 1 [26].

If the system is decoupled from the environment, the gen-eral map (1) reduces to ρS 7→ USρSU

†S , with US the uni-

tary time evolution operator acting only on the system.Control of both coherent and dissipative dynamics

is then achieved by finding corresponding sequences ofmaps (1) specified by sets of operation elements {Ek} andengineering these sequences in the laboratory. In partic-ular, for the example of dissipative quantum state prepa-ration, pumping to an entangled state |ψ〉 reduces toimplementing appropriate sequences of dissipative maps.These maps are chosen to drive the system to the desiredtarget state irrespective of its initial state. The result-ing dynamics have then the pure state |ψ〉 as the uniqueattractor, ρS 7→ |ψ〉〈ψ|. In quantum optics and atomicphysics, the techniques of optical pumping and laser cool-ing are successfully used for the dissipative preparationof quantum states, although on a single-particle level.The engineering of dissipative maps for the preparationof entangled states can be seen as a generalization of thisconcept of pumping and cooling in driven dissipative sys-tems to a many-particle context. To be concrete, we focuson dissipative preparation of stabilizer states, which rep-resent a large family of entangled states, including graphstates and error-correcting codes [27].

We start by outlining the concept of Kraus map en-gineering for the simplest non-trivial example of “cool-ing” a system of two qubits into a Bell state. TheHilbert space of two qubits is spanned by the four Bellstates defined as |Φ±〉 = 1√

2(|00〉 ± |11〉) and |Ψ±〉 =

1√2(|01〉 ± |10〉). Here, |0〉 and |1〉 denote the compu-

tational basis of each qubit, and we use the short-handnotation |00〉 = |0〉1|0〉2, for example. These maximallyentangled states are stabilizer states: the Bell state |Φ+〉,for instance, is said to be stabilized by the two stabi-lizer operators Z1Z2 and X1X2, where X and Z de-note the usual Pauli matrices, as it is the only two-qubit state being an eigenstate of eigenvalue +1 of thesetwo commuting observables, i.e. Z1Z2|Φ+〉 = |Φ+〉 andX1X2|Φ+〉 = |Φ+〉. In fact, each of the four Bell statesis uniquely determined as an eigenstate with eigenval-ues ±1 with respect to Z1Z2 and X1X2. The key idea ofcooling is that we can achieve dissipative dynamics whichpump the system into a particular Bell state, for exampleρS 7→ |Ψ−〉〈Ψ−|, by constructing two dissipative maps,under which the two qubits are irreversibly transferedfrom the +1 into the -1 eigenspaces of Z1Z2 and X1X2.

The dissipative maps are engineered with the aid ofan ancilla ”environment” qubit [28, 29] and a quantumcircuit of coherent and dissipative operations. The form

and decomposition of these maps into basic operationsare discussed in Box 1. The cooling dynamics are deter-mined by the probability of pumping from the +1 intothe -1 stabilizer eigenspaces, which can be directly con-trolled by varying the parameters in the employed gateoperations. For pumping with unit probability (p = 1),the two qubits reach the target Bell state — regardless oftheir initial state — after only one cooling cycle, i.e., bya single application of each of the two maps. In con-trast, when the pumping probability is small (p � 1),the process can be regarded as the infinitesimal limit ofthe general map (1). In this case, the system dynam-ics under a repeated application of the cooling cycle aredescribed by a master equation [30]

ρS = −i[HS , ρS ] (2)

+∑

k

(ckρSc

†k −

1

2c†kckρS − ρS

1

2c†kck

).

Here, HS is a system Hamiltonian, and ck are Lind-blad operators reflecting the system-environment cou-pling. For the purely dissipative maps discussed here,HS = 0. Quantum jumps from the +1 into the -1eigenspace of Z1Z2 and X1X2 are mediated by a set oftwo-qubit Lindblad operators (see box 1 for details); herethe system reaches the target Bell state asymptoticallyafter many cooling cycles.

EXPERIMENTAL BELL-STATE COOLING

The dissipative preparation of n-particle entangledstates is realized in a system of n+1 40Ca+ ions confinedto a string by a linear Paul trap and cooled to the groundstate of the axial centre-of-mass mode [31]. For each ion,the internal electronic Zeeman levels D5/2(m = −1/2)and S1/2(m = −1/2) encode the logical states |0〉 and |1〉of a qubit. For coherent operations, a laser at a wave-length of 729 nm excites the quadrupole transition con-necting the qubit states (S1/2 ↔ D5/2). A broad beamof this laser couples to all ions (see Fig. 1a) and realizesthe collective single-qubit gate UX(θ) = exp(−i θ2

∑iXi)

as well as a Mølmer-Sørensen [32] (MS) entangling oper-ation UX2(θ) = exp(−i θ4 (

∑iXi)

2) when using a bichro-matic light field [33]. Shifting the optical phase of thedrive field by π/2 exchanges Xi by Yi in these operations.As a figure of merit of our entangling operation, we canprepare 3 (5) qubits in a GHZ state with 98% (95%) fi-delity [34]. These collective operations form a universalset of gates when used in conjuction with single-qubit ro-tations UZi

(θ) = exp(−i θ2Zi), which are realized by anoff-resonant laser beam that can be adjusted to focus onany ion.

For engineering dissipation, the key element of themapping steps, shown as (i) and (iii) in Box 1, is a sin-gle MS operation. The two-qubit gate, step (ii), is real-

3

Box 1: Engineering dissipative open-system dynamics

Dissipative dynamics which cool two qubits from an ar-bitrary initial state into the Bell state |Ψ−〉 are realizedby two maps that generate pumping from the +1 into the-1 eigenspaces of the stabilizer operators Z1Z2 and X1X2:

⎥Ψ+〉

⎥Ψ-〉

⎥Φ+〉

⎥Φ-〉

Z1Z2+1 -1

-1

⎥Ψ+〉

⎥Ψ-〉

⎥Φ+〉

⎥Φ-〉

X 1X2

+1

For Z1Z2, the dissipative map pumping into the -1eigenspace is ρS 7→ E(ρS) = E1ρSE

†1 + E2ρSE

†2 with

E1 =√pX2

1

2(1 + Z1Z2) ,

E2 =1

2(1− Z1Z2) +

√1− p 1

2(1 + Z1Z2) .

The map’s action as a uni-directional pumping process canbe seen as follows. Since the operation element E1 containsthe projector 1

2(1+Z1Z2) onto the +1 eigenspace of Z1Z2,

the spin flip X2 can then convert +1 into -1 eigenstates ofZ1Z2, e.g., |Φ+〉 7→ |Ψ+〉. In contrast, the -1 eigenspaceof Z1Z2 is left invariant. In the limit p� 1, the repeatedapplication of this map reduces the process to a masterequation with Lindblad operator c = 1

2X2(1− Z1Z2).

We implement the two dissipative maps by quantumcircuits of three unitary operations (i)-(iii) and a dissipa-tive step (iv). Both maps act on the two system qubits Sand an ancilla which plays the role of the environment E:

1

⎥1〉 0 ⎥1〉

2 UX(p)M(Z

1Z2)

M-1(Z

1Z2)

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

M(X

1X2)

M-1(X

1X2)

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

E

S

⎥1〉

Z1Z2(p) X1X2(p)

UZ(p)

Cooling Z1Z2 proceeds as follows:(i) Information about whether the system is in the +1

or -1 eigenspace of Z1Z2 is mapped by M(Z1Z2) onto thelogical states |0〉 and |1〉 of the ancilla (initially in |1〉).

(ii) A controlled gate C(p) converts +1 into -1 eigen-states by flipping the state of the second qubit with prob-ability p, where

C(p) = |0〉〈0|0 ⊗ UX2(p) + |1〉〈1|0 ⊗ 11,

with UX2(p) = exp(iαX2) and p = sin2 α.(iii) The initial mapping is inverted by M−1(Z1Z2). At

this stage, in general, the ancilla and system qubits areentangled.

(iv) The ancilla is dissipatively reset to |1〉, which carriesaway entropy to “cool” the two system qubits.

The second map for cooling into the -1 eigenspace ofX1X2 is obtained from interchanging the roles of X andZ above.

The engineering of dissipative maps can be readily gen-eralized to systems of more qubits. As an example, dissi-pative preparation of n-qubit stabilizer states can be real-ized by a sequence of n dissipative maps (e.g. for Z1Z2 andX1X2X3X4 pumping), which are implemented in analogyto the quantum circuits for Bell state cooling discussedabove:

0

4

n

21

...

⎥1〉

Z 1Z2(p

)

...

X 1X2X

3X4(p

)

X1X2X3X4

Z 1Z2

ized by a combination of collective and single-qubit op-erations. The dissipative mechanism, step (iv), is herecarried out on the ancilla qubit by a reinitialization into|1〉, as shown in Fig. 1b. Another dissipative process [35]can be used to prepare the system qubits in a completelymixed state by the transfer |0〉 → (|0〉 + |S′〉)/

√2 fol-

lowed by optical pumping of |S′〉 into |1〉, where |S′〉 isthe electronic level S1/2(m = 1/2).

Qubit read-out is accomplished by fluorescence detec-tion on the S1/2 ↔ P1/2 transition. The ancilla qubit canbe measured without affecting the system qubits by ap-plying hiding pulses that shelve the system qubits in theD5/2 state manifold during fluoresence detection [36].

We use these tools to implement up to three Bell-statecooling cycles on a string of 2+1 ions. Starting with thetwo system qubits in a completely mixed state, we cooltowards the Bell state |Ψ−〉. Each cooling cycle is ac-complished with a sequence of 8 entangling operations,4 collective unitaries and 6 single-qubit operations; seethe Supplementary Information. The cooling dynamicsare probed by quantum state tomography of the system

qubits after every half cycle. The reconstructed statesare then used to map the evolution of the Bell-state pop-ulations.

In a first experiment, we set the pumping probability atp = 1 to observe deterministic cooling, and we obtain theBell-state populations shown in Fig. 2a. As expected, thesystem reaches the target state after the first cooling cy-cle. Regardless of experimental imperfections, the targetstate population is preserved under the repeated appli-cation of further cooling cycles and reaches up to 91(1)%after 1.5 cycles (ideally 100%). In a second experimenttowards the simulation of master-equation dynamics, theprobability is set at p = 0.5 to probe probabilistic coolingdynamics. The target state is then approached asymp-totically (Fig. 2b). After cooling the system for 3 cycleswith p = 0.5, up to 73(1)% of the initially mixed popu-lation cools into the target state (ideally 88%). In orderto completely characterize the Bell-state cooling process,we also perform a quantum process tomography [26]. Asan example, the reconstructed process matrix for p = 1after 1.5 cycles (Fig. 2c) has a Jamiolkowski process fi-

4

42P1/2

mJ42S1/2⎥1〉

(1)

(2)397 nm

ab

-1/2

32D5/2mJ

⎥0〉

-1/21/2⎥S’〉

729 nm++ +

0 1 ni

+

UZ

UX2, UY2,

UX, UY

E S

i

... ...

FIG. 1. Experimental tools for the simulation of openquantum systems with ions. a, The coherent componentis realized by collective (UX , UY , UX2 , UY 2) and single-qubitoperations (UZi) on a string of 40Ca+ ions which consists ofthe environment qubit (ion 0) and the system qubits (ions1 through n). b, The dissipative mechanism on the ancillaqubit is realized in the two steps shown on the Zeeman-split40Ca+ levels by (1) a coherent transfer of the population from|0〉 to |S′〉 and (2) an optical pumping to |1〉 after a transferto the 42P1/2 state by a circularly-polarised laser at 397 nm.

Pumping cycles1 2 3mixed

state

a

b

cRe(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0p = 1

p = 0.5

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉 ...

......

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

Pumping cycles1 2 3mixed

state

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Popu

latio

ns

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Popu

latio

ns

FIG. 2. Experimental signatures of Bell-state cooling.Evolution of the Bell-state populations |Φ+〉 (down triangles),|Φ−〉 (circles), |Ψ+〉 (squares) and |Ψ−〉 (up triangles) of aninitially mixed state under a cooling process with probabilitya, p = 1 or deterministic and b, p = 0.5. Error bars, notshown, are smaller than 2% (1σ). c, Reconstructed processmatrix χ (real part), displayed in the Bell-state basis, describ-ing the deterministic cooling of the two ions after one and ahalf cycles. The ideal process mapping any input state intothe state |Ψ−〉 has as non-zero elements only the four trans-parent bars shown. The imaginary elements of χ, ideally allzero, have an average magnitude of 0.004 and a maximum of0.03. The uncertainties in the elements of process matrix aresmaller than 0.01 (1σ).

delity [37] of 87.0(7)% with the ideal dissipative processρS 7→ |Ψ−〉〈Ψ−| which maps an arbitrary state of thesystem into the Bell state |Ψ−〉.

FOUR-QUBIT STABILIZER PUMPING

The engineering of the system-environment coupling,as demonstrated by Bell-state cooling above, can be read-ily extended to larger n-qubit open quantum systems.We illustrate such an engineering experimentally withthe dissipative preparation of a four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state (|0000〉+ |1111〉)/

√2. This

state is uniquely characterized as the simultaneous eigen-state of the four stabilizers Z1Z2, Z2Z3, Z3Z4 andX1X2X3X4, all with eigenvalue +1 (see Fig. 3a). There-fore, cooling dynamics into the GHZ state are realizedby four consecutive dissipative steps, each pumping thesystem into the +1 eigenspaces of the four stabilizers. Ina system of 4+1 ions, we implement such cooling dynam-ics in analogy with the Bell-state cooling sequence. Here,however, the circuit decomposition of one cooling cycleinvolves 16 five-ion entangling operations, 20 collectiveunitaries and 34 single-qubit operations; further detailsin the Supplementary Information.

In order to observe this deterministic cooling processinto the GHZ state, we begin by preparing the systemions in a completely mixed state. The evolution of thestate of the system after each pumping step is char-acterized by quantum state tomography. The recon-structed density matrices shown in Fig. 3b for the ini-tial and subsequent states arising in each step have afidelity, or state overlap [38], with the expected states of{79(2),89(1),79.7(7),70.0(7),55.8(4)}%; see Supplemen-tary Information for further details. Since the final statehas a fidelity with the target GHZ state greater than 50%,the initially mixed state is cooled into a genuinely four-particle entangled state [39]. The pumping dynamics isclearly reflected by the measured expectation values ofthe stabilizers ZiZj (ij = 12, 23, 34, 14) and X1X2X3X4

at each step, as shown in Fig. 3c.

Although the simulation of a master equation requiressmall pumping probabilities, as an exploratory study, weimplement up to five consecutive X1X2X3X4-stabilizerpumping steps with two probabilities p = 1 and 0.5, forthe initial state |1111〉. The measured expectation val-ues of all relevant stabilizers for pumping with p = 1are shown in Fig. 3d. After the first step, the stabilizerX1X2X3X4 reaches an expectation value of -0.68(1); af-ter the second step and up to the fifth step, it is preservedat -0.72(1) regardless of experimental imperfections.

For X1X2X3X4-stabilizer pumping with p = 0.5, thefour-qubit expectation value increases at each step andasymptotically approaches -0.54(1) (ideally -1, fit shownin Fig. 3d). A state tomography after each pumping stepyields fidelities with the expected GHZ-state of {53(1),50(1), 49(1), 44(1), 41(1)}%. From the reconstructeddensity matrices we determine that the states generatedafter one to three cycles are genuinely multi-partite en-tangled [40].

5

X1X2X3X4Z3Z4Z2Z3Z1Z2X1X2X3X4

c d

b|1111〉

X1X2X3X4

ρmixed ρ1 ρ2 ρ3 ρ4

Re(ρmixed) Re(ρ3)Re(ρ1) Re(ρ2) Re(ρ4)

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

... ... ...

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

Z 1Z2

X 1X2X

3X4

Z 2Z3

Z 3Z4

a

2

Z1Z2

Z2Z3Z3Z4

X1X2X3X4

1

3

4

Z1Z4

−1

−0.5

0

0.5

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

p = 0.5p = 1

〈X1X2X3X4〉

〈Z1Z2〉〈Z2Z3〉

〈Z3Z4〉〈Z1Z4〉

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

〈X1X2X3X4〉

〈Z1Z2〉

〈Z2Z3〉

〈Z3Z4〉

〈Z1Z4〉

FIG. 3. Experimental signatures of four-qubit stabilizer pumping. a, Schematic of the four system qubits to be cooledinto the GHZ state (|0000〉 + |1111〉)/

√2, which is uniquely characterized as the simultaneous eigenstate with eigenvalue +1

of the shown stabilizers. b, Reconstructed density matrices (real part) of the initial mixed state ρmixed and subsequent statesρ1,2,3,4 after sequentially pumping the stabilizers Z1Z2, Z2Z3, Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4. Populations in the initial mixed statewith qubits i and j antiparallel, or in the -1 eigenspace of the ZiZj stabilizer, disappear after pumping this stabilizer intothe +1 eigenspace. For example, populations in dark blue dissappear after Z1Z2-stabilizer pumping. A final pumping of thestabilizer X1X2X3X4 builds up the coherence between |0000〉 and |1111〉, shown as red bars in the density matrix of ρ4. c,Measured expectation values of the relevant stabilizers; ideally, non-zero expectation values have a value of +1. d, Evolutionof the measured expectation values of the relevant stabilizers for repetitively pumping an initial state |1111〉 with probabilityp = 0.5 into the -1 eigenspace of the stabilizer X1X2X3X4. The incremental cooling is evident by the red line fitted to thepumped stabilizer expectation value. The evolution of the expectation value 〈X1X2X3X4〉 for deterministic cooling (p = 1) isalso shown. The observed decay of 〈ZiZj〉 is due to imperfections and detrimental to the pumping process (see SupplementaryInformation). Error bars in c and d, ±1σ.

COHERENT FOUR-PARTICLE INTERACTIONS

The coupling of the system to an ancilla particle, asused above for the engineering of dissipative dynamics,can also be harnessed to mediate effective coherent n-body interactions between the system qubits [26, 29].The demonstration of a toolbox for open-system quan-tum simulation is thus complemented by adding unitarymaps ρS 7→ USρSU

†S to the dissipative elements described

above. Here, US = exp(−iτHS) is the unitary time evo-lution operator for a time step τ , which is generatedby a system Hamiltonian HS . In contrast to the re-cent achievements [41, 42] of small-scale analog quantumsimulators based on trapped ions, where two-body spinHamiltonians have been engineered directly [43], here wepursue a gate-based implementation following the con-cept of Lloyd’s digital quantum simulator [12], where thetime evolution is decomposed into a sequence of coherent(and dissipative) steps.

In particular, the available gate operations enable anexperimentally efficient simulation of n-body spin inter-actions [44], which we illustrate by implementing time dy-namics of a four-body Hamiltonian HS = gX1X2X3X4.

This example is motivated by the efforts to experimen-tally realize Kitaev’s toric code Hamiltonian [25], whichis a sum of commuting four-qubit stabilizer operatorsrepresenting four-body spin interactions. This paradig-matic model belongs to a whole class of spin systems,which have been discussed in the context of topologicalquantum computing [45] and quantum phases exhibitingtopological order [46].

The elementary unitary operation US can be decom-posed into a compact sequence of three coherent opera-tions, as explained in Fig. 4a. In an experiment carriedout with 4+1 ions, we apply US for different values of τto the system ions initially prepared in |1111〉. We ob-served coherent oscillations in the subspace spanned by|0000〉 and |1111〉, as shown in Fig. 4b. We character-ize our implementation of US by comparing the expectedand measured states, determined by quantum state to-mography, for each value of τ . The fidelity between theexpected and measured states is on average 85(2)%.

6

0 π/2 π 3π/2 2πPhase, β

Popu

latio

ns

a b

⎥1〉

(i) (ii) (iii)

⎥1〉

M(X

1X2X

3X4)

M−1(X

1X2X

3X4)UZ(β)

four-body one-body

0

0.5

1

0

4

21

3

FIG. 4. Coherent simulation of 4-body spin interac-tions. a, The elementary building block for the simulationof coherent evolution US = exp(−iτHS) corresponding to thefour-body Hamiltonian HS = gX1X2X3X4 is implementedby a circuit of three operations: (i) First, a 5-qubit operationM(X1X2X3X4), here realized by a single entangling 5-ion MSgate US2

x(π/2), coherently maps the information, whether the

four system spins are in the +1(-1) eigenspace of X1X2X3X4

onto the internal states |0〉 and |1〉 of the ancilla qubit. (ii)Due to this mapping, all +1 (-1) eigenstates of X1X2X3X4 ac-quire a phase β/2 (−β/2) by the single-qubit rotation UZ(β)on the ancilla ion. (iii) After the mapping is inverted, the an-cilla qubit returns to its initial state |1〉 and decouples fromthe four system qubits, which in turn have evolved accordingto US . The simulation time step τ is related to the phase byβ = 2gτ . b, Experimentally measured populations in state|0000〉 (up triangles) and |1111〉 (circles) as a function of β fora single application of US to the initial state |1111〉 of the foursystem qubits (error bars, ±1σ). The solid lines show the idealbehavior. For comparison, the dashes lines indicate these pop-ulations for simultaneous single-qubit (one-body) oscillations,each driven by the rotation exp(−iβ

2Xi).

QND MEASUREMENT OF FOUR-QUBITSTABILIZER OPERATORS

Our toolbox for quantum simulation of open systems isextended by the possibility of reading out n-body observ-ables in a nondestructive way, which we illustrate here fora 4-qubit stabilizer operator X1X2X3X4. As above, wefirst coherently map the information about whether thesystem spins are in the +1(-1) eigenspace of the stabi-lizer operator onto the logical states |0〉 and |1〉 of theancilla qubit. In contrast to the engineering of coherentand dissipative maps above, where this step was followedby single-and two-qubit gate operations, here we proceedinstead by measuring the ancilla qubit.

Thus, depending on the measurement outcome for theancilla, the system qubits are projected onto the corre-sponding eigenspace of the stabilizer: ρS 7→ P+ρSP+/N+

(P−ρSP−/N−) for finding the ancilla in |0〉 (|1〉) withthe normalization factor N± = Tr(P±ρSP±). Here,P± = 1

2 (1±X1X2X3X4) denote the projectors onto the±1 eigenspaces of the stabilizer operator. Note that ourmeasurement is QND in the sense that (superposition)states within one of the two eigenspaces are not affectedby the measurement.

In the experiment with 4+1 ions, we prepare differ-ent four-qubit system input states (tomographically char-

acterize in additional experiments), carry out the QNDmeasurement and tomographically determine the result-ing system output states.

To characterize how well the measurement device pre-pares a definite state, we use as input |1111〉, which is anon-eigenstate of the stabilizer. In this case, when theancilla qubit is found in |0〉 or |1〉 the system qubits areprepared in the state (|0000〉 ± |1111〉)/

√2 by the QND

measurement. Experimentally we observe this behaviourwith a quantum state preparation (QSP) fidelity [47] ofFQSP = 73(1)%. On the other hand, for a stabilizereigenstate, the QND measurement preserves the stabi-lizer expectation value. Experimentally, for the inputstate (|0011〉−|1100〉)/

√2, we observe a QND fidelity [47]

of FQND = 96.9(6)%. For more details see the Supple-mentary Information.

Our measurement of n-body observables is an essen-tial ingredient in quantum error correction and quantumcomputing protocols. In contrast to the open-loop exper-iments presented here [28], this ability also enables an al-ternative approach for system-environment engineering:The outcome from measurements of the environment canbe classically processed and used for feedback operationson the system. This procedure paves the way to closed-loop simulation scenarios in open quantum systems.

OUTLOOK

Our experimental demonstration of a toolbox of el-ementary building blocks in a system of trapped ionsshould be seen as a first, and conceptual step towardsthe realization of an open quantum system simulator,with dynamics governed by the interplay of coherent anddissipative evolution. Such a quantum device has appli-cations in various fields [13] including condensed-matterphysics and quantum chemistry, and possibly in mod-elling quantum effects in biology [48]. In addition toquantum simulation, it enables alternative approaches toquantum computing [22].

Although the present experiments were performedwith a linear ion-trap quantum computer architecture,the ongoing development of two-dimensional trap ar-rays [49] promises scalable implementations of Kitaev’storic code [25] and related spin models, as discussed inthe context of topological quantum computing. Follow-ing our original proposal [50], these ideas can be realizedwith neutral atoms in optical lattices and can be easilyadapted to other physical platforms ranging from optical,atomic and molecular systems to solid-state devices.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank K. Hammerer, I. Chuang, andO. Guhne for discussions and T. Northup for critically

7

reading the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge sup-port by the Austrian Science Fund (FOQUS), the Euro-pean Commission (AQUTE), the Institut fur Quanten-information GmbH, and a Marie Curie International In-coming Fellowship within the 7th European CommunityFramework Programme.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

M.M. and J.T.B. developed the research, based on the-oretical ideas proposed originally by P.Z.; J.T.B., P.S.and D.N. carried out the experiment; J.T.B., P.S. andT.M. analysed the data; P.S., J.T.B., D.N., T.M., M.C.,M.H. and R.B. contributed to the experimental setup;M.M., J.T.B. and P.Z. wrote the manuscript, with revi-sions provided by C.F.R.; all authors contributed to thediscussion of the results and manuscript.

[1] Ladd, T. D., Jelezko, F., Laflamme, R., Nakamura, Y.,Monroe, C. et al. Quantum computers. Nature 464,45–53 (2010)

[2] Kimble, H. J. The quantum internet. Nature 453, 1023–1030 (2008)

[3] Schoelkopf, R. J. & Girvin, S. M. Wiring up quantumsystems. Nature 451, 664–669 (2008)

[4] Neeley, M., Bialczak, R. C., Lenander, M., Lucero, E.,Mariantoni, M. et al. Generation of three-qubit entangledstates using superconducting phase qubits. Nature 467,570–573 (2010)

[5] Saffman, M., Walker, T. G. & Mølmer, K. Quantuminformation with Rydberg atoms. Rev. Mod. Phys. 82,2313–2363 (2010)

[6] Bloch, I., Dalibard, J. & Zwerger, W. Many-body physicswith ultracold gases. Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 885–964 (2008)

[7] O’Brien, J. L. Optical quantum computing. Science 318,1567–1570 (2007)

[8] Clarke, J. & Wilhelm, F. K. Superconducting quantumbits. Nature 453, 1031–1042 (2008)

[9] Hanson, R., Kouwenhoven, L. P., Petta, J. R., Tarucha,S. & Vandersypen, L. M. K. Spins in few-electron quan-tum dots. Rev. Mod. Phys. 79, 1217–1265 (2007)

[10] Wrachtrup, J. & Jelezko, F. Processing quantum in-formation in diamond. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 18,S807–S824 (2006)

[11] Feynman, R. Simulating physics with computers. Int. J.Theor. Phys. 21, 467–488 (1982)

[12] Lloyd, S. Universal quantum simulators. Science 273,1073–1078 (1996)

[13] Buluta, I. & Nori, F. Quantum simulators. Science 326,108–111 (2009)

[14] Myatt, C. J. et al. Decoherence of quantum superposi-tions through coupling to engineered reservoirs. Nature403, 269–273 (2000)

[15] Deleglise, S., Dotsenko, I., Sayrin, C., Bernu, J., Brune,M. et al. Reconstruction of non-classical cavity fieldstates with snapshots of their decoherence. Nature 455,510–514 (2008)

[16] Barreiro, J. T., Schindler, P., Guhne, O., Monz,T., Chwalla, M. et al. Experimental multiparti-cle entanglement dynamics induced by decoherence.Nature Phys. (2010). Advance Online Publication,doi:10.1038/nphys1781

[17] Krauter, H., Muschik, C. A., Jensen, K., Wasilewski, W.,Petersen, J. M. et al. Entanglement generated by dissi-pation. arXiv:1006.4344 (2010)

[18] Diehl, S. et al. Quantum states and phases in drivenopen quantum systems with cold atoms. Nature Phys. 4,878–883 (2008)

[19] Cho, J., Bose, S. & Kim, M. S. Optical pumping intomany-body entanglement. arXiv:1008.4088 (2010)

[20] Goldstein, G., Cappellaro, P., Maze, J. R., Hodges, J. S.,Jiang, L. et al. Environment-assisted precision measure-ment. arXiv:1001.0089 (2010)

[21] Diehl, S., Yi, W., Daley, A. & Zoller, P. Driven dissipa-tive d-wave pairing of atomic fermions. arXiv:1007.3420(2010)

[22] Verstraete, F., Wolf, M. M. & Cirac, J. I. Quantumcomputation and quantum-state engineering driven bydissipation. Nature Phys. 5, 633–636 (2009)

[23] Haffner, H., Roos, C. F. & Blatt, R. Quantum computingwith trapped ions. Phys. Rep. 469, 155–203 (2008)

[24] Home, J. P., Hanneke, D., Jost, J. D., Amini, J. M.,Leibfried, D. et al. Complete methods set for scalableion trap quantum information processing. Science 325,1227–1230 (2009)

[25] Kitaev, A. Y. Fault-tolerant quantum computation byanyons. Ann. Phys. 303, 2 – 30 (2003)

[26] Nielsen, M. A. & Chuang, I. L. Quantum Computationand Quantum Information. Cambridge University Press(2000)

[27] Steane, A. M. Efficient fault-tolerant quantum comput-ing. Nature 399, 124–126 (1999)

[28] Lloyd, S. & Viola, L. Engineering quantum dynamics.Phys. Rev. A 65, 010101 (2001)

[29] Dur, W., Bremner, M. J. & Briegel, H. J. Quantumsimulation of interacting high-dimensional systems: Theinfluence of noise. Phys. Rev. A 78, 052325 (2008)

[30] Wiseman, H. M. & Milburn, G. J. Quantum Measure-ment and Control. Cambridge University Press (2009)

[31] Schmidt-Kaler, F. et al. How to realize a universal quan-tum gate with trapped ions. App. Phys. B 77, 789–796(2003)

[32] Mølmer, K. & Sørensen, A. Multiparticle entanglement ofhot trapped ions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1835–1838 (1999)

[33] Roos, C. F. Ion trap quantum gates with amplitude-modulated laser beams. New J. Phys. 10, 013002 (2008)

[34] Monz, T. et al. Coherence of large-scale entanglement.arXiv:1009.6126 (2010)

[35] Schindler, P. et al. Experimental repetitive quantum er-ror correction. In preparation (2010)

[36] Roos, C. F. et al. Control and measurement of three-qubit entangled states. Science 304, 1478–1480 (2004)

[37] Gilchrist, A., Langford, N. K. & Nielsen, M. A. Distancemeasures to compare real and ideal quantum processes.Phys. Rev. A 71, 062310 (2005)

[38] Jozsa, R. Fidelity for mixed quantum states. J. Mod.Opt. 41, 2315–2353 (1994)

[39] Sackett, C. A. et al. Experimental entanglement of fourparticles. Nature 404, 256–259 (2000)

[40] Guhne, O. & Seevinck, M. Separability criteria forgenuine multiparticle entanglement. New J. Phys. 12,

8

053002 (2010)[41] Friedenauer, A., Schmitz, H., Glueckert, J., Porras, D. &

Schaetz, T. Simulating a quantum magnet with trappedions. Nature Phys. 4, 757–761 (2008)

[42] Kim, K., Chang, M.-S., Korenblit, S., Islam, R., Ed-wards, E. E. et al. Quantum simulation of frustrated isingspins with trapped ions. Nature 465, 590–593 (2010)

[43] Porras, D. & Cirac, J. I. Effective quantum spin systemswith trapped ions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 207901 (2004)

[44] Muller, M., Hammerer, K., Zhou, Y., Roos, C. F. &Zoller, P. Open-system quantum simulation with trappedions. In preparation (2010)

[45] Nayak, C., Simon, S. H., Stern, A., Freedman, M. &Das Sarma, S. Non-abelian anyons and topological quan-tum computation. Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 1083–1159 (2008)

[46] Moessner, R. & Sondhi, S. L. Resonating valence bondphase in the triangular lattice quantum dimer model.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1881–1884 (2001)[47] Ralph, T. C., Bartlett, S. D., OBrien, J. L., Pryde, G. J.

& Wiseman, H. M. Quantum nondemolition measure-ments for quantum information. Phys. Rev. A 73, 012113(2006)

[48] Fleming, G. R., Huelga, S. & Plenio, M., editors. Focuson Quantum Effects and Noise in Biomolecules, New J.Phys., volume 12. Institute of Physics (2010)

[49] R. Schmied, J. H. W. & Leibfried, D. Optimal surface-electrode trap lattices for quantum simulation withtrapped ions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 233002 (2009)

[50] Weimer, H., Muller, M., Lesanovsky, I., Zoller, P. &Buchler, H. P. A Rydberg quantum simulator. NaturePhys. 6, 382–388 (2010)

An Open-System Quantum Simulator with Trapped IonsSUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

Julio T. Barreiro*,1, Markus Muller*,2,3, Philipp Schindler1, Daniel Nigg1, Thomas Monz1, Michael Chwalla1,2,Markus Hennrich1, Christian Roos1,2, Peter Zoller2,3 and Rainer Blatt1,2

1Institut fur Experimentalphysik, Universitat Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria2Institut fur Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften,Technikerstrasse 21A, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

3Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Universitat Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria* These authors contributed equally to this work.

CONTENTS

I. Bell-state cooling 1

A. Implemented Kraus maps 1

B. Circuit decomposition 1

C. Additional data 2

II. Four-qubit stabilizer pumping 2

A. Cooling 2

B. Repeated four-qubit stabilizer pumping 4

C. Pushing “anyons” around 4

D. Pumping into “excited” states 5

III. QND measurement of a four-qubit stabilizer 5

A. Further details 5

B. Quantitative analysis of the performance 6

References 8

List of tables

I: QND probability distributions with hiding 5

II: QND probability distributions without hiding 5

III: QND fidelities with hiding 6

IV: QND fidelities without hiding 7

I. BELL-STATE COOLING

A. Implemented Kraus maps

The Bell state |Ψ−〉 is not only uniquely determinedas the simultaneous eigenstate with eigenvalue -1 of thetwo stabilizer operators X1X2 and Z1Z2 (as mentionedin the text), but also by X1X2 and Y1Y2. In the exper-iment, we implemented cooling into |Ψ−〉 by engineer-

ing the two Kraus maps ρS 7→ E1ρSE†1 + E2ρSE

†2 and

ρS 7→ E′1ρSE′1†

+ E′2ρSE′2†, where

E1 =√p Y1

1

2(1 +X1X2) ,

E2 =1

2(1−X1X2) +

√1− p 1

2(1 +X1X2) ,

E′1 =√pX1

1

2(1 + Y1Y2) ,

E′2 =1

2(1− Y1Y2) +

√1− p 1

2(1 + Y1Y2) ,

which generate pumping into the -1 eigenspaces of X1X2

and Y1Y2 (instead of pumping into the eigenspaces ofX1X2 and Z1Z2 as explained in Box 1 of the main text).The reason for pumping into the eigenspaces ofX1X2 andY1Y2 is that the mapping and unmapping steps, shownas (i) and (iii) in Box 1, are realized by a single MS gateUX2(π/2) and UY 2(π/2), respectively.

B. Circuit decomposition

The map for pumping into the -1 eigenspace of X1X2

was implemented by the unitary

UX2(π/2) C(p)UX2(π/2) (1)

(corresponding to steps (i) - (iii) in Box 1) followed byan optical pumping of the ancilla qubit to |1〉. Here, thetwo-qubit controlled gate is

C(p) = |0〉〈0|0 ⊗ exp(iαZ1) + |1〉〈1|0 ⊗ 11

= exp

[1

2(1 + Z0)iαZ1

]

= UZ1(−α)UY (π/2)U

(0,1)X2 (−α)UY (−π/2) (2)

where U(0,1)X2 (−α) = exp(i(α/2)X0X1) denotes an MS

gate acting only on the ancilla and the first systemqubit. This two-qubit MS gate operation was imple-mented in the experiment by the use of refocusing tech-niques (Nebendahl et al., 2009). In more detail, the

gate U(0,1)X2 was realized by interspersing two of the avail-

able three-qubit MS gate operations with single-ion light

arX

iv:1

104.

1146

v1 [

quan

t-ph

] 6

Apr

201

1

2

shifts on the second system qubit which induces a π-phaseshift between the qubit states. Alternatively, this refo-cusing could be avoided, and the sequences further sim-plified, by hiding the population of individual ions (herethe second system ion) which are not supposed to partic-ipate in collective coherent operations in electronic levelsdecoupled from the driving laser excitation. More detailson how to systematically decompose Kraus maps into theexperimentally available ion-trap gate operations, in par-ticular the multi-ion MS entangling gate, can be foundin (Muller et al., 2010).

The circuit decompositions for the experimental imple-mentation of the two maps are shown in Fig. S1. We notethat the circuits have been simplified at the expense ofimplementing in addition in each dissipative map a flipoperation Y1Y2 on the two system qubits. However, asthis additional unitary corresponds to one of the stabi-lizers into whose -1 eigenspace cooling is performed, thisdoes not interfere with the cooling dynamics.

Cooling with unit pumping probability p = 1 corre-sponds to α = π/2, whereas p = 0.5 is realized with bysetting α = π/4. In the experiment, the ”fundamental”MS gate was calibrated to implement UX2(α/2). Thefully entangling operation UX2(π/2) at the beginning andthe end of the sequence Fig. S1a was then implementedby applying the UX2(α/2) operation twice (for p = 1)or four times (for p = 0.5). The fully entangling oper-ations UY 2(π/2) in Fig. S1b were implemented by two-and four-fold application of the ”fundamental” MS gatewith a shifted optical phase of the driving laser (cf. Sec-tion 2 in the main text).

UX2(

π/2)

⎥1〉

UY(π/2)

UZ(π)

⎥1〉

UX2(

α/2

)

UX2(

α/2

)

UZ(π) U

Y(π/2)

UX2(

π/2)

a

UY2 (

π/2)

⎥1〉

UZ(−α

)

UY(π/2)

UZ(π)

⎥1〉

UX2(

α/2

)

UX2(

α/2

)

UZ(π) U

Y(π/2)

UY2 (

π/2)

b

UZ(−α

)

1

2

0

1

2

0

FIG. S1 Experimental sequences for Bell-state cool-ing. Pumping into the eigenspaces of eigenvalue -1 of X1X2

(circuit a,) and Y1Y2 (circuit b,) occurs with a probability pin each step, where sin2 α = p.

C. Additional data

The initially mixed state was prepared with a fidelityof F=99.6(3)% with respect to the ideal state 1

4114×4.Physical process matrices were reconstructed with

maximum likelihood techniques (Jezek et al., 2003). An

error analysis was carried out via Monte Carlo simu-lations over the multinomially distributed measurementoutcomes of the state and process tomography. For eachprocess and state, 200 Monte Carlo samples were gener-ated and reconstructed via maximum-likelihood estima-tion.

II. FOUR-QUBIT STABILIZER PUMPING

Expectation values of the stabilizer operators Z1Z2,Z2Z3, Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4 were not determined fromthe reconstructed density matrices of the system qubits.Instead, we performed fluorescence measurements in theX and Z basis on 5250 copies of the corresponding quan-tum states (for p = 0.5 cooling, 2100 copies were mea-sured). The error bars were then determined from themultinomially distributed raw data.

A. Cooling

Cooling into the GHZ state (|0000〉 + |1111〉)/√

2 wasrealized by a pumping cycle where the four system qubitswere deterministically pumped into the +1 eigenspaces ofthe stabilizers Z1Z2, Z2Z3, Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4.

Pumping into the -1 eigenspace of Z1Z2 in the firstcooling step could be achieved in complete analogy withBell state cooling, i.e. by implementing a dissipative map,which only involves operations on the ancilla qubit andthe system qubits #1 and #2, whereas the system qubits#3 and #4 remain completely unaffected. This couldeither be achieved through refocusing techniques or byhiding system ions #3 and #4 in electronically decoupledstates for the duration of the dissipative circuit.

In the experiment, however, we used a few simplica-tions, which are schematically shown in Fig. S2 and listedbelow:

• For deterministic cooling (p = 1), the inverse map-ping step (shown in Box 1) is not necessary and hasbeen taken out.

• In the coherent mapping step (shown in Box 1) theinformation about whether the system ions are ina ±1 eigenstate of Z1Z2 is mapped onto the logicalstates of the ancilla qubit. This step ideally onlyinvolves the ancilla and the system qubits #1 and#2. One way to achieve this three-qubit operationwithout affecting the system qubits #3 and #4, isto combine the available five-ion MS gate with ap-propriately chosen refocusing pulses, i.e. light shiftoperations on individual ions. Those would have tobe chosen such that ions #0, #1 and #2 becomedecoupled from ions #3 and #4, and furthermoreresidual interactions between ions #3 and #4 can-cel out. However, it turns out that residual inter-

3

⎥1〉

UY(π/2)

⎥1〉

UZ(π/2)

UX2(

π/2)

UX2(

π/2)

UX2(

π/2)

UX2(

π/2)

UY(π/2)

UY(

-π/2

)

UY(

-π/2

)

rotations from the X- to the Z-basis

mapping (i) controlled flip of qubit #2 (step (ii))

reset of the ancilla qubit (step (iv))

2

3

4

1

aZ1Z2

Z2Z3Z3Z4

X1X2X3X4

c

UX2(

π/2)

UX2(

π/2) U

X2(π/4)

UX2(

π/4)

UZ(π)

UZ(π)

UZ(π)

UZ(π)

=

b

2

1

0

3

4

2

1

0

3

4

FIG. S2 Pumping into the +1 eigenspace of the Z1Z2

stabilizer operator a, Ideally, only the ancilla qubit and thetwo system qubits #1 and #2 are involved in the circuit. b,An entangling gate acting on these three ions can be achievedby a refocusing technique, where ions #3 and #4 decouplefrom the dynamics. However, the latter ions still become en-tangled. However, these residual interactions are not harmfulto the cooling, as they do not affect the expectation valuesof the other two-qubit stabilizer operators. c, Dashed opera-tions in the quantum circuit indicate such residual entanglingoperations.

actions between ions #3 and #4 can be tolerated:although not required for the Z1Z2-pumping dy-namics, they are not harmful, as they do not al-ter the expectation values of the other two-qubitstabilizers Z2Z3 and Z3Z4. In our experiment thedecoupling of ions #0, #1 and #2 from the ions#3 and #4 was achieved by the circuit shown inFig. S2b.

The additional interactions in the pumping of thetwo-qubit stabilizer operators ZiZj affect the stateof the system qubits with respect to the four-qubitstabilizer X1X2X3X4. However, this effect is notdetrimental to the cooling, provided the pumpinginto the eigenspace of X1X2X3X4 is performed asthe final step in the cooling cycle.

• In the employed sequence, the number of single-qubit rotations was reduced wherever possible. Es-sential single-qubit light shift operations, such asthose needed for re-focusing operations, were kept.

• Local rotations of the system ions at the end ofa cooling step, which would be compensated at

the beginning of the subsequent cooling step, wereomitted when several dissipative maps were appliedin a row. The corresponding gates of the sequencesare displayed in blue in Steps 1-3.

These simplifications allowed us to significantly reducethe length and complexity of the employed gate sequencesfor one stabilizer pumping step. The compressed gatesequences as used in the experiment are explicitly givenbelow.

Step 1 (pumping into the +1 eigenspace of Z1Z2):

UY (−π/2)UZ2(−π/2)

UX(π/2)UZ2(−π/2)UX(−π/2)

UZ1(π)UX2(π/4)UZ2(π)UZ0(π)UX2(π/4)

UX(−π/2)UZ2(−π/2)UZ0(−π/2)UX(π/2)

UX2(π/4)UZ4(π)UZ3(π)UX2(π/4)

UY (π/2)UX(−π/2)UZ0(−π/2)UX(π/2)

Step 2 (pumping into the +1 eigenspace of Z2Z3):

UY (−π/2)UZ3(−π/2)

UX(π/2)UZ3(−π/2)UX(−π/2)

UZ2(π)UX2(π/4)UZ3

(π)UZ0(π)UX2(π/4)

UX(−π/2)UZ3(−π/2)UZ0

(−π/2)UX(π/2)

UX2(π/4)UZ4(π)UZ1

(π)UX2(π/4)

UY (π/2)UX(−π/2)UZ0(−π/2)UX(π/2)

Step 3 (pumping into the +1 eigenspace of Z3Z4):

UY (−π/2)UZ4(−π/2)

UX(π/2)UZ4(−π/2)UX(−π/2)

UZ3(π)UX2(π/4)UZ4

(π)UZ0(π)UX2(π/4)

UX(−π/2)UZ4(−π/2)UZ0

(−π/2)UX(π/2)

UX2(π/4)UZ2(π)UZ1

(π)UX2(π/4)

UY (π/2)UX(−π/2)UZ0(−π/2)UX(π/2)

Step 4 (pumping into the +1 eigenspace ofX1X2X3X4):

UX(−π/2)

UZ4(−π/2)UX(π/2)UZ4

(−π/2)

UX2(π/4)UZ4(π)UZ0

(π)UX2(π/4)

UZ4(−π/2)UX(−π/2)UZ0

(−π/2)UX(π/2)

UX2(π/4)UX2(π/4)

Figure S10 shows the reconstructed density matrices(real and imaginary parts) for every step of the coolingcycle. The complete circuit decomposition of one coolingcycle involves 16 five-ion entangling operations, 28 (20)collective unitaries and 36 (34) single-qubit operationswith (without) optional operations in blue. The resetoperation involves further pulses not accounted for above.

4

B. Repeated four-qubit stabilizer pumping

To study the robustness of the dissipative operation,we prepared the initial state |1111〉 and subsequently ap-plied repeatedly the dissipative map for pumping into the+1 eigenspace of the four-qubit stabilizer X1X2X3X4.We observed that after a single dissipative step a non-zero expectation value of X1X2X3X4 built up and stayedconstant under subsequent applications of this dissipativemap. However, due to imperfections in the gate opera-tions, the expectation values of the two-qubit stabiliz-ers decreased, ideally they should not be affected by theX1X2X3X4-pumping step (see Fig. S3). Interestingly,the expectation values of Z1Z4 and Z3Z4 decayed signif-icantly faster than those for Z1Z2 and Z2Z3. This decaycan be explained by the fact that in the gate sequenceused for pumping into the +1 eigenspace of X1X2X3X4,step 4 above, single-ion light-shift operations are appliedonly to the fourth system qubit and the ancilla. Thisindicates that errors in the single-qubit gates applied tothe fourth system ion accumulate under the repeated ap-plication of the dissipative step, and thus affect the sta-bilizers Z1Z4 and Z3Z4 which involve this system qubitmore strongly than the others. This destructive effectcan be minimized by alternating the roles of the systemqubits.

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

X1X2X3X4

|1111〉X1X2X3X4

... ... ... ...

〈Z1Z2〉〈Z2Z3〉

〈Z3Z4〉〈Z1Z4〉

〈X1X2X3X4〉

FIG. S3 Measured expectation value of stabilizersfor repeated pumping without sequence optimization.The expectation values of Z1Z4 and Z3Z4 show a significantlyfaster decay than those for Z1Z2 and Z2Z3. In every step ofthe cooling, most single-ion light-shift operations are appliedto the fourth system qubit.

Such optimization has been done for the dissipativedynamics shown in Fig. S4. Here, starting from the initialstate |1111〉, repeated pumping into the -1 eigenspace ofX1X2X3X4 has been implemented by the sequence

UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)

UX(−π/2)

UZ4(−π/2× p)UX(π/2)UZ4

(π)

UY 2(π/4× p)UZ0(π)UZ4

(π)UY 2(π/4× p)UY (π/2)UZ0

(−π/2)UY (−π/2)

UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)UX2(π/8)

−1

−0.5

0

0.5

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

〈Z1Z2〉〈Z2Z3〉〈Z3Z4〉〈Z1Z4〉〈X1X2X3X4〉

X1X2X3X4

|1111〉X1X2X3X4

... ... ...

FIG. S4 Measured expectation value of stabilizers forrepeated pumping with sequence optimization. Alltwo-qubit stabilizers decay at the same rate during cooling.In step 1,2,3,4, and 5 the single-qubit light-shift operationswere applied on the system qubits 4,3,2,1, and 1, respectively.

Here, we observed that indeed the expectation valuesof all two-qubit stabilizers decreased at the same paceand at a slightly slower rate (see Fig. S4). Upon repeat-ing the sequence above 1,2,3,4, and 5 times, we changedthe operations shown in red to act on qubits 4,3,2,1, and1, respectively. The stabilizer expectation values for de-terministic cooling, or p = 1, are shown in Fig. S4.

C. Pushing “anyons” around

In Kitaev’s toric code (Kitaev, 2003), spins are locatedon the edges of a two-dimensional square lattice. TheHamiltonian

H = −g(∑

p

Ap +∑

v

Bp) (3)

is a sum of mutually commuting four-qubit stabilizersAp =

∏i∈pXi and Bv =

∏i∈v Zi, which describe four-

spin interactions between spins located around plaque-ttes p and vertices v of the lattice. The ground state ofthe Hamiltonian is the simultaneous +1 eigenstate of allstabilizer operators. The model supports two types ofexcitations that obey anyonic statistics under exchange(braiding), and they correspond to -1 eigenstates of eitherplaquette or vertex stabilizers.

For a minimal instance of this model, represented bya single plaquette of four spins located on the edges, theHamiltonian contains a single four-qubit interaction termX1X2X3X4 and pairwise two-spin interactions ZiZj ofspins sharing a corner of the plaquette. The ground stateas the simultaneous +1 eigenstate of these stabilizers isthe GHZ-state (|0000〉+ |1111〉)/

√2. States correspond-

ing to -1 eigenvalues of a two-qubit stabilizer ZiZj can beinterpreted as a configuration with an excitation locatedat the corner between the two spins i and j. Similarly, afour-qubit state with an eigenvalue of -1 with respect toX1X2X3X4, would correspond to an anyonic excitationlocated at the center of the plaquette.

5

In the experiment we prepared an initial state |0111〉and then performed the cooling cycle of four determinis-tic pumping steps into the +1 eigenspaces of Z1Z2, Z2Z3,Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4, using the sequences for Steps 1 to4 given in section II.A. The expectation values of the sta-bilizer operators for the initial state and the four spinsafter each pumping step are shown in Fig. S5. The dis-sipative dynamics can be visualized as follows: For theinitial state with 〈Z1Z2〉 = −1 and 〈Z1Z4〉 = −1 a pairof excitations is located on the upper left and right cor-ners of the plaquette, whereas 〈X1X2X3X4〉 = 0 impliesan anyon of the other type is present at the center ofthe plaquette with a probability 50%. In the first cool-ing step, where the first two spins are pumped into the+1 eigenspace of Z1Z2, the anyon at the upper right cor-ner is dissipatively pushed to the lower right corner ofthe plaquette. In the third step of pumping into the +1eigenspace of Z3Z4, the two excitations located on theupper and lower lefts corners fuse and disappear fromthe system. In the final step of pumping into the +1eigenspace of X1X2X3X4, the anyon with a probabilityof 50% at the center of the plaquette is pushed out fromthe plaquette.

However, we’d like to stress that borrowing conceptsfrom topological spin models, such as anyonic excitations,here is merely a convenient language to phrase and visual-ize the dissipative dynamics. In the present work with upto five ions, we do not explore the physics of topologicalspin models, since (i) in a minimal system of four spinsthe concepts developed for larger lattice models becomequestionable, and more importantly, (ii) during the im-plemented cooling dynamics the underlying (four-body)Hamiltonian of the model was not present. We ratherdemonstrate the basic tools which will allow one to ex-plore this physics once larger, two-dimensional systemsbecome available in the laboratory.

We note that photon experiments have reported theobservation of correlations compatible with the manipu-lations of “anyons” in a setup representing two plaque-ttes (Lu et al., 2009; Pachos et al., 2009). Such exper-iments are based on postselection of measurements (asin teleportation by Bouwmeester et al., 1997), whichshould be contrasted to our deterministic implementationof open system dynamics to prepare and manipulate thecorresponding quantum state (as in deterministic tele-portation by Barrett et al., 2004; Riebe et al., 2004).

D. Pumping into “excited” states

Starting from an initially fully mixed state of fourqubits, we also implemented cooling into a different GHZ-type state, (|0010〉 − |1101〉)/

√2, by a sequence of four

dissipative steps: 1) pumping into the +1 eigenspace ofZ1Z2, 2) pumping into the -1 eigenspace of Z2Z2, 3)pumping into the -1 eigenspace of Z3Z4 and 4) pump-

−1

−0.5

0

0.5

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

〈Z1Z2〉〈Z2Z3〉〈Z3Z4〉〈Z1Z4〉〈X1X2X3X4〉

X1X2X3X4Z3Z4Z2Z3Z1Z2

ρ1 ρ2 ρ3 ρ4|0111〉

FIG. S5 Pushing “anyons” around by dissipation. Mea-sured expectation values of stabilizer operators for cooling dy-namics of pumping into the +1 eigenspaces of Z1Z2, Z2Z3,Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4, starting in the state |0111〉.

ing into the -1 eigenspace of X1X2X3X4. In the contextof Kitaev’s toric code, this state would correspond toan excited state. However, as above, we point out thatthe underlying Hamiltonian was not implemented in thecooling dynamics.

The measured expectation values of the stabilizers areshown in Fig. S6. The final density matrix, as deter-mined from quantum state tomography after the fourcooling steps, is shown in Fig. S7. This cooling cycle wasimplemented with the same sequences as given for Step1 to 4 in section II.A, with the only difference that thesign of the phase shift operations displayed in red waschanged in Steps 2, 3, and 4. This allowed us to invertthe pumping direction from the +1 into -1 eigenspaces ofZ2Z2, Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4.

−1

−0.5

0

0.5

1

Expe

ctat

ion

valu

e

〈Z1Z2〉

〈Z2Z3〉

〈Z3Z4〉

〈Z1Z4〉

〈X1X2X3X4〉

X1X2X3X4Z3Z4Z2Z3Z1Z2

ρmixed ρ1 ρ2 ρ3 ρ4

FIG. S6 Cooling into an “excited” state. Measured ex-pectation values of two- and four-qubit stabilizer operators forpumping into the state (|0010〉−|1101〉)/

√2, starting from an

initially four-qubit mixed state.

III. QND MEASUREMENT OF A FOUR-QUBITSTABILIZER

A. Further details

As shown in Fig. S8, the QND measurement involves amapping step where the information about whether thesystem described by an input density matrix ρin is in

6

Re(ρ)

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

Im(ρ)

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

X 1X2X

3X4

0

-0.1

0.1

0.2

0.3

-0.2-0.3

0

-0.1

0.1

0.2

0.3

-0.2-0.3

FIG. S7 Reconstructed density matrix after the fullcooling cycle for dissipative preparation of the state(|0010〉 − |1101〉)/

√2. This final state has a fidelity of

60(2)% with the expected state. This fidelity was determinedfrom parity and coherence measurements and analysed withbayesian inference techniques as done in (Monz et al., 2010).

the +1 / -1 eigenspace of A = X1X2X3X4 is coherentlymapped onto the internal states |0〉 and |1〉 of the ancillaqubit, which is initially prepared in |1〉. Subsequentlythe ancilla qubit is measured in its computational basis,leaving the system qubits in a corresponding output stateρout.

ρSin, pin ρS

out, pout

FQND(pin,pout)

pancE

S

⎥1〉

M(X

1X2X

3X4)

hidi

ng

un-h

idin

g

FM(panc,pin)

FQSP(panc,pout)1

0

23

4

FIG. S8 QND measurement of the four-qubit stabi-lizer operator X1X2X3X4. After the coherent mappingM(X1X2X3X4), the ancilla qubit is measured. This mea-surement was performed both with and without applying ad-ditional pulses to hide the populations of the system qubitsin electronically uncoupled states for the duration of the flu-orescence measurement on the ancilla.

The coherent mapping M(X1X2X3X4) was realized bythe sequence

UX(π/4)UZ0(π)UX(−π/4)

UX2(π/4)UX2(π/4)UZ0(−π/2)UX2(π/4)UX2(π/4)

UY (−π/4)UZ0(π)UY (π/4)

which implements

M(X1X2X3X4) = − i√2

(X0 + Y0)⊗ P+

+1√2

(1− iZ0)⊗ P−, (4)

with P± = 12 (1±X1X2X3X4) the projectors onto the ±1

eigenspaces of X1X2X3X4. Equation (4) shows that for

the system qubits being in a state belonging to the +1eigenspace of the stabilizer operator, the ancilla is flippedfrom |1〉 to |0〉, whereas it remains in its initial state |1〉otherwise.

Subsequently, the ancilla as well as the four systemqubits were measured. This was done by measuring thefive ions simultaneously. Alternatively, we first hid thefour system qubits in electronic levels decoupled from thelaser excitation, performed the fluorescence measurementof the ancilla qubit, then recovered the state of the sys-tem qubits and tomographically measured the state ofthe four system qubits. The second approach, where thestate of the system is not affected by the measurement ofthe ancilla, is of importance if the information from theancilla measurement is to be used for feedback operationson the state of the system.

B. Quantitative analysis of the performance

To characterize the performance of a QND measure-ment for a (multi-)qubit system, a set of requirementsand corresponding fidelity measures have been discussedin the literature (Ralph et al., 2006).

(1) First of all, the measurement outcomes for the an-cilla qubit should agree with those that one would expectfrom a direct measurement of the observable A on the in-put density matrix. This property can be quantified bythe measurement fidelity,

FM =(√

pin+pm|0〉 +

√pin−p

m|1〉

)2, (5)

which measures the correlations of the distribution ofmeasurement outcomes pm = {pm|0〉, pm|1〉} of the ancilla

qubit with the expected distribution pin = {pin+ , pin−} di-rectly obtained from ρin, where pin± = Tr{ 12 (1±A)ρin}.

(2) The QND character, reflected by the fact that theobservable A to be measured should not be disturbedby the measurement itself, becomes manifest in ideallyidentical probability distributions pin and pout, which aredetermined from the input and output density matrices.These correlations are quantified by the QND fidelity

FQND =

(√pin+p

out+ +

√pin−p

out−

)2

, (6)

where pout± = Tr{ 12 (1±A)ρout}.(3) Finally, by measuring the ancilla qubit the sys-

tem qubits should be projected onto the correspondingeigenspace of the measured observable A. Thus the qual-ity of the QND measurement as a quantum state prepa-ration (QSP) device is determined by the correlationsbetween the ancilla measurement outcomes and the cor-responding system output density matrices. It can bedescribed by the QSP fidelity

FQSP = pm+pout|0〉,+ + pm−p

out|1〉,−, (7)

7

where pout|0/1〉,± denotes the conditional probability of find-

ing the system qubits in the +1 (-1) eigenspace of A, pro-vided the ancilla qubit has been previously measured in|0〉 (|1〉).

The probability distributions for the system in-put and output states, the ancilla measurement out-come distributions, and the resulting fidelity valuesare summarized in Tables I to IV. The input stateshad a fidelity (Jozsa, 1994) with the ideal states(|0000〉+ |1111〉)/

√2, (|0000〉−|1111〉)/

√2 and (|0011〉−

|1100〉)/√

2 of 75.3(9), 77.3(8), 93.2(4)%.We observe that we obtain higher values for the mea-

surement and QND fidelities than for the QSP fidelities.The latter is relevant in the context of quantum error cor-rection or closed-loop simulation protocols or more gener-ally whenever the information from the ancilla measure-ment is used for further processing of the system outputstate.

With the additional hiding and unhiding pulses beforeand after the measurement of the ancilla we observe aloss of fidelity of a few percent in the QSP fidelities.

8

TABLE I QND probability distributions. Obtained from measurements with hiding of the system ions during the measurementof the ancilla.

input state eigenspace pmin pmout pin pinm=0 pinm=1 pout poutm=0 poutm=1

|0000〉+ |1111〉 +1 0.959(1) 0.847(3) 0.817(9) 0.822(9) 0.618(34) 0.689(12) 0.736(12) 0.359(34)

−1 0.041(1) 0.153(3) 0.183(9) 0.178(9) 0.382(34) 0.311(12) 0.264(12) 0.641(34)

|0000〉 − |1111〉 +1 0.955(1) 0.169(3) 0.191(10) 0.187(9) 0.328(36) 0.310(11) 0.640(26) 0.242(12)

−1 0.045(1) 0.831(3) 0.809(10) 0.813(9) 0.672(36) 0.690(11) 0.360(26) 0.758(12)

|0011〉 − |1100〉 +1 0.978(1) 0.103(2) 0.041(4) 0.035(4) 0.412(47) 0.137(9) 0.476(36) 0.097(7)

−1 0.022(1) 0.897(2) 0.959(4) 0.965(4) 0.588(47) 0.863(9) 0.524(36) 0.903(7)

TABLE II QND probability distributions. Obtained from measurements without hiding of the system ions during themeasurement of the ancilla.

input state eigenspace pmout pout poutm=0 poutm=1

|0000〉+ |1111〉 +1 0.850(3) 0.713(11) 0.789(11) 0.336(30)

−1 0.150(3) 0.287(11) 0.211(11) 0.664(30)

|0000〉 − |1111〉 +1 0.188(3) 0.265(12) 0.504(28) 0.220(11)

−1 0.812(3) 0.735(12) 0.496(28) 0.780(11)

|0011〉 − |1100〉 +1 0.099(2) 0.073(7) 0.416(35) 0.038(5)

−1 0.901(2) 0.927(7) 0.584(35) 0.962(5)

TABLE III QND figures of merit. Determined from measurements with hiding of the system ions during the measurement ofthe ancilla. Since the state |0011〉 − |1100〉 is particularly robust against decoherence, the fidelity FQSP is higher, as shown for8 ions in (Monz et al., 2010).

input state eigenspace pin pout pm poutQND=+ poutQND=− FM(pin, pm) FQND(pin, pout) FQSP(pm, poutQND)

|0000〉+ |1111〉 +1 0.82(1) 0.69(1) 0.85 0.74(1) 0.998(1) 0.978(5) 0.72(1)

−1 0.18(1) 0.31(1) 0.15 0.64(3)

|0000〉 − |1111〉 +1 0.19(1) 0.31(1) 0.17 0.64(3) 0.999(1) 0.980(5) 0.74(1)

−1 0.81(1) 0.69(1) 0.83 0.76(1)

|0011〉 − |1100〉 +1 0.041(4) 0.14(1) 0.10 0.48(4) 0.985(3) 0.969(6) 0.86(1)

−1 0.959(4) 0.86(1) 0.90 0.90(1)

|1111〉 +1 0.5 0.47(1) 0.50049 0.70(1) 1 0.9992(6) 0.73(1)

−1 0.5 0.53(1) 0.49951 0.76(1)

REFERENCES

Barrett, M. D., J. Chiaverini, T. Schaetz, J. Britton, W. M.Itano, J. D. Jost, E. Knill, C. Langer, D. Leibfried, R. Oz-eri, and D. J. Wineland, 2004, Nature 429 (6993), 737.

Bouwmeester, D., et al., 1997, Nature 390, 575.Gilchrist, A., N. K. Langford, and M. A. Nielsen, 2005, Phys.

Rev. A 71, 062310.Jezek, M., J. Fiurasek, and Z. Hradil, 2003, Phys. Rev. A

68 (1), 012305.Jozsa, R., 1994, J. Mod. Opt. 41 (12), 2315.Kitaev, A. Y., 2003, Ann. Phys. 303 (1), 2.Lu, C.-Y., W.-B. Gao, O. Guhne, X.-Q. Zhou, Z.-B. Chen,

and J.-W. Pan, 2009, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102 (3), 030502.

Monz, T., et al., 2010, arXiv:1009.6126.Muller, M., K. Hammerer, Y. Zhou, C. F. Roos, and P. Zoller,

2010, In preparation.Nebendahl, V., H. Haffner, and C. F. Roos, 2009, Phys. Rev.

A 79 (1), 012312.Pachos, J. K., W. Wieczorek, C. Schmid, N. Kiesel,

R. Pohlner, and H. Weinfurter, 2009, New J. Phys. 11 (8),083010.

Ralph, T. C., S. D. Bartlett, J. L. OBrien, G. J. Pryde, andH. M. Wiseman, 2006, Phys. Rev. A 73 (1), 012113.

Riebe, M., H. Haffner, C. F. Roos, W. Hansel, J. Ben-helm, G. P. T. Lancaster, T. W. Korber, C. Becher,F. Schmidt-Kaler, D. F. V. James, and R. Blatt, 2004, Na-ture 429 (6993), 734.

9

TABLE IV QND figures of merit. Determined from measurements without hiding of the system ions during the measurementof the ancilla. Since the state |0011〉 − |1100〉 is particularly robust against decoherence, the fidelity FQSP is higher, as shownfor 8 ions in (Monz et al., 2010).

input state eigenspace pout pm poutQND=+ poutQND=− FM(pin, pm) FQND(pin, pout) FQSP(pm, poutQND)

|0000〉+ |1111〉 +1 0.71(1) 0.85 0.79(1) 0.998(1) 0.984(4) 0.77(1)

−1 0.29(1) 0.15 0.66(3)

|0000〉 − |1111〉 +1 0.26(1) 0.19 0.50(3) 1.0000(1) 0.992(3) 0.73(1)

−1 0.74(1) 0.81 0.78(1)

|0011〉 − |1100〉 +1 0.07(1) 0.10 0.42(3) 0.986(2) 0.996(2) 0.91(1)

−1 0.93(1) 0.90 0.96(1)

|1111〉 +1 0.52(1) 0.5078 0.75(1) 0.99994 0.9996(5) 0.74(1)

−1 0.48(1) 0.4922 0.73(1)

10

Re(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...⎟Ψ

− 〉〈Ψ− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

Im(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

Re(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

Im(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...⎟Ψ

− 〉〈Ψ− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

Bell-state pumping with p = 1 after 1 pumping cycle

Bell-state pumping with p = 1 after 1.5 pumping cycles

Bell-state pumping with p = 0.5 after 3 pumping cycles

Re(χ ideal)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

-0.2

-0.4

Re(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

-0.2

-0.4

Im(χ)

⎟Ψ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

⎟Ψ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ−〉〈Ψ

−⎜

⎟Φ+〉〈Ψ

−⎜

〈Ψ+⎜

〈Φ−⎜

〈Φ+⎜

.........⎟Ψ+ 〉⎟Φ

− 〉⎟Φ+ 〉

......

...

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Ψ

+ ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

− ⎜

⎟Ψ− 〉〈Φ

+ ⎜

-0.2

-0.4

FIG. S9 Reconstructed process matrices of experimental Bell-state cooling. The reconstructed process matrix forp = 1 after 1 (1.5) cycles has a Jamiolkowski process fidelity (Gilchrist et al., 2005) of 83.4(7)% (87.0(7)%) with the idealdissipative process ρS 7→ |Ψ−〉〈Ψ−| which maps an arbitrary state of the system into the Bell state |Ψ−〉. This ideal processhas as non-zero elements only the four transparent bars shown. The reconstructed process matrix for p = 0.5 after 3 cycles hasa Jamiolkowski process fidelity of 60(1)% with the ideal process χideal shown [Im(χideal) = 0].

11

Re(ρmixed) Re(ρ3)Re(ρ1) Re(ρ2) Re(ρ4)

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

Z 1Z2

X 1X2X

3X4

Z 2Z3

Z 3Z4

Im(ρmixed) Im(ρ3)Im(ρ1) Im(ρ2) Im(ρ4)

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

|0000〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

Re(ρmixed) Re(ρ3)Re(ρ1) Re(ρ2) Re(ρ4)|00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

...... |00

00〉

|0001〉

|1111〉

|1110〉

〈1111⎢〈1110⎢〈0000⎢

〈0001⎢

......

Z 1Z2

X 1X2X

3X4

Z 2Z3

Z 3Z4

Ideal Ideal Ideal Ideal Ideal

00.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

00.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

00.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

00.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

00.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

FIG. S10 Ideal and reconstructed density matrices of plaquette cooling. An inital mixed state ρmixed is sequentiallypumped by the stabilizers Z1Z2, Z2Z3, Z3Z4 and X1X2X3X4 driving the system into the states ρ1,2,3,4.

1

2

3

4

|0〉

|1〉

|1〉|1〉

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

“annihilation”1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

Z1Z2

Z2Z3

Z3Z4

X1X2X3X4

Friday, October 1, 2010

FIG. S11 Pushing “anyons”. Cartoon of the dissipative dynamics. The pumping dynamics can be visualized by dissipativepushing of excitations (green and red dots) between adjacent corners of the plaquette.