Experimental realization of non-Abelian non-adiabatic geometric gates

The geometric aspects of quantum mechanics are emphasized most prominently by the concept of geometric phases, which are acquired whenever a quantum system evolves along a path in Hilbert space, that is, the space of quantum states of the system. The geometric phase is determined only by the shape of this path(1-3) and is, in its simplest form, a real number. However, if the system has degenerate energy levels, then matrix-valued geometric state transformations, known as non-Abelian holonomies-the effect of which depends on the order of two consecutive paths-can be obtained(4). They are important, for example, for the creation of synthetic gauge fields in cold atomic gases(5) or the description of non-Abelian anyon statistics(6,7). Moreover, there are proposals(8,9) to exploit non-Abelian holonomic gates for the purposes of noise-resilient quantum computation. In contrast to Abelian geometric operations(10), non-Abelian ones have been observed only in nuclear quadrupole resonance experiments with a large number of spins, and without full characterization of the geometric process and its non-commutative nature(11,12). Here we realize non-Abelian non-adiabatic holonomic quantum operations(13,14) on a single, superconducting, artificial three-level atom(15) by applying a well-controlled, two-tone microwave drive. Using quantum process tomography, we determine fidelities of the resulting non-commuting gates that exceed 95 per cent. We show that two different quantum gates, originating from two distinct paths in Hilbert space, yield non-equivalent transformations when applied in different orders. This provides evidence for the non-Abelian character of the implemented holonomic quantum operations. In combination with a non-trivial two-quantum-bit gate, our method suggests a way to universal holonomic quantum computing.