Fast quantum control of cavities using an improved protocol without coherent errors

The selective number-dependent arbitrary phase (SNAP) gates form a powerful class of quantum gates, imparting arbitrarily chosen phases to the Fock states of a cavity. However, for short pulses, coherent errors limit the performance. Here we demonstrate in theory and experiment that such errors can be completely suppressed, provided that the pulse times exceed a specific limit. The resulting shorter gate times also reduce incoherent errors. Our approach needs only a small number of frequency components, the resulting pulses can be interpreted easily, and it is compatible with fault-tolerant schemes.