Crosstalk is a leading source of failure in multiqubit quantum information processors. It can arise from a wide range of disparate physical phenomena, and can introduce subtle correlations in the errors experienced by a device. Several hardware chara
cterization protocols are able to detect the presence of crosstalk, but few provide sufficient information to distinguish various crosstalk errors from one another. In this article we describe how gate set tomography, a protocol for detailed characterization of quantum operations, can be used to identify and characterize crosstalk errors in quantum information processors. We demonstrate our methods on a two-qubit trapped-ion processor and a two-qubit subsystem of a superconducting transmon processor.
Benchmarking and characterising quantum states and logic gates is essential in the development of devices for quantum computing. We introduce a Bayesian approach to self-consistent process tomography, called fast Bayesian tomography (FBT), and experi
mentally demonstrate its performance in characterising a two-qubit gate set on a silicon-based spin qubit device. FBT is built on an adaptive self-consistent linearisation that is robust to model approximation errors. Our method offers several advantages over other self-consistent tomographic methods. Most notably, FBT can leverage prior information from randomised benchmarking (or other characterisation measurements), and can be performed in real time, providing continuously updated estimates of full process matrices while data is acquired.
Measurements that occur within the internal layers of a quantum circuit -- mid-circuit measurements -- are an important quantum computing primitive, most notably for quantum error correction. Mid-circuit measurements have both classical and quantum o
utputs, so they can be subject to error modes that do not exist for measurements that terminate quantum circuits. Here we show how to characterize mid-circuit measurements, modelled by quantum instruments, using a technique that we call quantum instrument linear gate set tomography (QILGST). We then apply this technique to characterize a dispersive measurement on a superconducting transmon qubit within a multiqubit system. By varying the delay time between the measurement pulse and subsequent gates, we explore the impact of residual cavity photon population on measurement error. QILGST can resolve different error modes and quantify the total error from a measurement; in our experiment, for delay times above 1000 ns we measured a total error rate (i.e., half diamond distance) of $epsilon_{diamond} = 8.1 pm 1.4 %$, a readout fidelity of $97.0 pm 0.3%$, and output quantum state fidelities of $96.7 pm 0.6%$ and $93.7 pm 0.7%$ when measuring $0$ and $1$, respectively.
Typical quantum gate tomography protocols struggle with a self-consistency problem: the gate operation cannot be reconstructed without knowledge of the initial state and final measurement, but such knowledge cannot be obtained without well-characteri
zed gates. A recently proposed technique, known as randomized benchmarking tomography (RBT), sidesteps this self-consistency problem by designing experiments to be insensitive to preparation and measurement imperfections. We implement this proposal in a superconducting qubit system, using a number of experimental improvements including implementing each of the elements of the Clifford group in single `atomic pulses and custom control hardware to enable large overhead protocols. We show a robust reconstruction of several single-qubit quantum gates, including a unitary outside the Clifford group. We demonstrate that RBT yields physical gate reconstructions that are consistent with fidelities obtained by randomized benchmarking.
We report high-fidelity laser-beam-induced quantum logic gates on magnetic-field-insensitive qubits comprised of hyperfine states in $^{9}$Be$^+$ ions with a memory coherence time of more than 1 s. We demonstrate single-qubit gates with error per gat
e of $3.8(1)times 10^{-5}$. By creating a Bell state with a deterministic two-qubit gate, we deduce a gate error of $8(4)times10^{-4}$. We characterize the errors in our implementation and discuss methods to further reduce imperfections towards values that are compatible with fault-tolerant processing at realistic overhead.