Faster Randomized Dynamical Decoupling

Abstract: We present a randomized dynamical decoupling (DD) protocol that can improve the performance of any given deterministic DD, by using no more than two additional pulses. Our construction is implemented by probabilistically applying sequences of pulses, which, when combined, effectively eliminate the error terms that scale linearly with the system-environment coupling strength. As a result, we show that a randomized protocol using a few pulses can outperform deterministic DD protocols that require considerably more pulses. Furthermore, we prove that the randomized protocol provides an improvement compared to deterministic DD sequences that aim to reduce the error in the system's Hilbert space, such as Uhrig DD, which had been previously regarded to be optimal. To rigorously evaluate the performance, we introduce new analytical methods suitable for analyzing higher-order DD protocols that might be of independent interest. We also present numerical simulations confirming the significant advantage of using randomized protocols compared to widely used deterministic protocols.