No Arabic abstract
Performing large calculations with a quantum computer will likely require a fault-tolerant architecture based on quantum error-correcting codes. The challenge is to design practical quantum error-correcting codes that perform well against realistic noise using modest resources. Here we show that a variant of the surface code -- the XZZX code -- offers remarkable performance for fault-tolerant quantum computation. The error threshold of this code matches what can be achieved with random codes (hashing) for every single-qubit Pauli noise channel; it is the first explicit code shown to have this universal property. We present numerical evidence that the threshold even exceeds this hashing bound for an experimentally relevant range of noise parameters. Focusing on the common situation where qubit dephasing is the dominant noise, we show that this code has a practical, high-performance decoder and surpasses all previously known thresholds in the realistic setting where syndrome measurements are unreliable. We go on to demonstrate the favourable sub-threshold resource scaling that can be obtained by specialising a code to exploit structure in the noise. We show that it is possible to maintain all of these advantages when we perform fault-tolerant quantum computation.
The development of robust architectures capable of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation should consider both their quantum error-correcting codes, and the underlying physical qubits upon which they are built, in tandem. Following this design principle we demonstrate remarkable error correction performance by concatenating the XZZX surface code with Kerr-cat qubits. We contrast several variants of fault-tolerant systems undergoing different circuit noise models that reflect the physics of Kerr-cat qubits. Our simulations show that our system is scalable below a threshold gate infidelity of $p_mathrm{CX} sim 6.5%$ within a physically reasonable parameter regime, where $p_mathrm{CX}$ is the infidelity of the noisiest gate of our system; the controlled-not gate. This threshold can be reached in a superconducting circuit architecture with a Kerr-nonlinearity of $10$MHz, a $sim 6.25$ photon cat qubit, single-photon lifetime of $gtrsim 64mu$s, and thermal photon population $lesssim 8%$. Such parameters are routinely achieved in superconducting circuits.
Quantum communication typically involves a linear chain of repeater stations, each capable of reliable local quantum computation and connected to their nearest neighbors by unreliable communication links. The communication rate in existing protocols is low as two-way classical communication is used. We show that, if Bell pairs are generated between neighboring stations with a probability of heralded success greater than 0.65 and fidelity greater than 0.96, two-way classical communication can be entirely avoided and quantum information can be sent over arbitrary distances with arbitrarily low error at a rate limited only by the local gate speed. The number of qubits per repeater scales logarithmically with the communication distance. If the probability of heralded success is less than 0.65 and Bell pairs between neighboring stations with fidelity no less than 0.92 are generated only every T_B seconds, the logarithmic resource scaling remains and the communication rate through N links is proportional to 1/(T_B log^2 N).
State distillation is the process of taking a number of imperfect copies of a particular quantum state and producing fewer better copies. Until recently, the lowest overhead method of distilling states |A>=(|0>+e^{ipi/4}|1>)/sqrt{2} produced a single improved |A> state given 15 input copies. New block code state distillation methods can produce k improved |A> states given 3k+8 input copies, potentially significantly reducing the overhead associated with state distillation. We construct an explicit surface code implementation of block code state distillation and quantitatively compare the overhead of this approach to the old. We find that, using the best available techniques, for parameters of practical interest, block code state distillation does not always lead to lower overhead, and, when it does, the overhead reduction is typically less than a factor of three.
We present a comprehensive and self-contained simplified review of the quantum computing scheme of Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 190504 (2007), which features a 2-D nearest neighbor coupled lattice of qubits, a threshold error rate approaching 1%, natural asymmetric and adjustable strength error correction and low overhead arbitrarily long-range logical gates. These features make it by far the best and most practical quantum computing scheme devised to date. We restrict the discussion to direct manipulation of the surface code using the stabilizer formalism, both of which we also briefly review, to make the scheme accessible to a broad audience.
The surface code is a leading candidate quantum error correcting code, owing to its high threshold, and compatibility with existing experimental architectures. Bravyi et al. (2006) showed that encoding a state in the surface code using local unitary operations requires time at least linear in the lattice size $L$, however the most efficient known method for encoding an unknown state, introduced by Dennis et al. (2002), has $O(L^2)$ time complexity. Here, we present an optimal local unitary encoding circuit for the planar surface code that uses exactly $2L$ time steps to encode an unknown state in a distance $L$ planar code. We further show how an $O(L)$ complexity local unitary encoder for the toric code can be found by enforcing locality in the $O(log L)$-depth non-local renormalisation encoder. We relate these techniques by providing an $O(L)$ local unitary circuit to convert between a toric code and a planar code, and also provide optimal encoders for the rectangular, rotated and 3D surface codes. Furthermore, we show how our encoding circuit for the planar code can be used to prepare fermionic states in the compact mapping, a recently introduced fermion to qubit mapping that has a stabiliser structure similar to that of the surface code and is particularly efficient for simulating the Fermi-Hubbard model.