Resonant cancellation of off-resonant effects in a multilevel qubit

Off-resonant effects are a significant source of error in quantum computation. This paper presents a group-theoretic proof that off-resonant transitions to the higher levels of a multilevel qubit can be completely prevented in principle. This result can be generalized to prevent unwanted transitions due to qubit-qubit interactions. A simple scheme exploiting dynamic pulse control techniques is presented that can cancel transitions to higher states to arbitrary accuracy.