Tailoring fusion-based error correction for high thresholds to biased fusion failures

We introduce fault-tolerant (FT) architectures for error correction with the XZZX cluster state based on performing measurements of two-qubit Pauli operators $Z\otimes Z$ and $X\otimes X$, or fusions, on a collection of few-body entangled resource states. Our construction is tailored to be effective against noise that predominantly causes faulty $X\otimes X$ measurements during fusions. This feature offers practical advantage in linear optical quantum computing with dual-rail photonic qubits, where failed fusions only erase $X\otimes X$ measurement outcomes. By applying our construction to this platform, we find a record high FT threshold to fusion failures exceeding $25\%$ in the experimentally relevant regime of non-zero loss rate per photon, considerably simplifying hardware requirements.Comment: 7+6 pages, 4+6 figures, comments welcom

Study of noise in virtual distillation circuits for quantum error mitigation

Virtual distillation has been proposed as an error mitigation protocol for estimating the expectation values of observables in quantum algorithms. It proceeds by creating a cyclic permutation of $M$ noisy copies of a quantum state using a sequence of controlled-swap gates. If the noise does not shift the dominant eigenvector of the density operator away from the ideal state, then the error in expectation-value estimation can be exponentially reduced with $M$. In practice, subsequent error-mitigation techniques are required to suppress the effect of noise in the cyclic permutation circuit itself, leading to increased experimental complexity. Here, we perform a careful analysis of noise in the cyclic permutation circuit and find that the estimation of expectation value of observables diagonal in the computational basis is robust against dephasing noise. We support the analytical result with numerical simulations and find that $67\%$ of errors are reduced for $M=2$, with physical dephasing error probabilities as high as $10\%$. Our results imply that a broad class of quantum algorithms can be implemented with higher accuracy in the near-term with qubit platforms where non-dephasing errors are suppressed, such as superconducting bosonic qubits and Rydberg atoms.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Mitigating Temporal Fragility in the XY Surface Code

An important outstanding challenge that must be overcome in order to fully utilize the XY surface code for correcting biased Pauli noise is the phenomena of fragile temporal boundaries that arise during the standard logical state preparation and measurement protocols. To address this challenge we propose a new logical state preparation protocol based on locally entangling qubits into small Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-like states prior to making the stabilizer measurements that place them in the XY-code state. We prove that in this new procedure $O(\sqrt{n})$ high-rate errors along a single lattice boundary can cause a logical failure, leading to an almost quadratic reduction in the number of fault-configurations compared to the standard state-preparation approach. Moreover, the code becomes equivalent to a repetition code for high-rate errors, guaranteeing a 50% code-capacity threshold during state preparation for infinitely biased noise. With a simple matching decoder we confirm that our preparation protocol outperforms the standard one in terms of both threshold and logical error rate in the fault-tolerant regime where measurements are unreliable and at experimentally realistic biases. We also discuss how our state-preparation protocol can be inverted for similar fragile-boundary-mitigated logical-state measurement.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure