Optimally robust shortcuts to population inversion in cat-state qubits

Abstract: Cat-state qubits formed by photonic coherent states are a promising candidate for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computing. Such logic qubits have a biased noise channel that the bit-flip error dominates over all the other errors. In this manuscript, we propose an optimally robust protocol using the control method of shortcuts to adiabaticity to realize a nearly perfect population inversion in a cat-state qubit. We construct a shortcut based on the Lewis-Riesenfeld invariant and examine the stability versus different types of perturbations for the fast and robust population inversion. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the population inversion can be mostly insensitive to systematic errors in our protocol. Even when the parameter imperfection rate for bit-flip control is $20\%$, the final population of the target state can still reach $\geq 99\%$. The optimally robust control provides a feasible method for fault-tolerant and scalable quantum computation.