  We investigate the effectiveness of different dynamical decoupling protocols
for storage of a single qubit in the presence of a purely dephasing bosonic
bath, with emphasis on comparing quantum coherence preservation under uniform
vs. non-uniform delay times between pulses. In the limit of instantaneous
bit-flip pulses, this is accomplished by establishing a new representation of
the controlled qubit evolution, where the resulting decoherence behaviour is
directly expressed in terms of the free evolution. Simple analytical
expressions are given to approximate the long- and short- term coherence
behaviour for both ohmic and supra-ohmic environments. We focus on systems with
physical constraints on achievable time delays, with emphasis on pure dephasing
of excitonic qubits in quantum dots. Our analysis shows that little advantage
of high-level decoupling schemes based on concatenated or optimal design is to
be expected if operational constraints prevent pulses to be applied
sufficiently fast. In such constrained scenarios, we demonstrate how simple
modifications of repeated periodic echo protocols can offer significantly
improved coherence preservation in realistic parameter regimes.

Quantum Physics