A new technical paper titled “Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold” was published by researchers at Google and other collaborators.
Abstract
“Quantum error correction provides a path to reach practical quantum computing by combining multiple physical qubits into a logical qubit, where the logical error rate is suppressed exponentially as more qubits are added. However, this exponential suppression only occurs if the physical error rate is below a critical threshold. In this work, we present two surface code memories operating below this threshold: a distance-7 code and a distance-5 code integrated with a real-time decoder. The logical error rate of our larger quantum memory is suppressed by a factor of Λ = 2.14 ± 0.02 when increasing the code distance by two, culminating in a 101-qubit distance-7 code with 0.143% ± 0.003% error per cycle of error correction. This logical memory is also beyond break-even, exceeding its best physical qubit’s lifetime by a factor of 2.4 ± 0.3. We maintain below-threshold performance when decoding in real time, achieving an average decoder latency of 63 μs at distance-5 up to a million cycles, with a cycle time of 1.1 μs. To probe the limits of our error-correction performance, we run repetition codes up to distance-29 and find that logical performance is limited by rare correlated error events occurring approximately once every hour, or 3 × 109 cycles. Our results present device performance that, if scaled, could realize the operational requirements of large scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.”
Find the technical paper here. Published August 2024. See MIT Technology Review article here.
Acharya, R., Aghababaie-Beni, L., Aleiner, I., Andersen, T.I., Ansmann, M., Arute, F., Arya, K., Asfaw, A., Astrakhantsev, N., Atalaya, J. and Babbush, R., 2024. Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold. arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.13687
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