18,475 research outputs found
Ultrahigh Error Threshold for Surface Codes with Biased Noise
We show that a simple modification of the surface code can exhibit an
enormous gain in the error correction threshold for a noise model in which
Pauli Z errors occur more frequently than X or Y errors. Such biased noise,
where dephasing dominates, is ubiquitous in many quantum architectures. In the
limit of pure dephasing noise we find a threshold of 43.7(1)% using a tensor
network decoder proposed by Bravyi, Suchara and Vargo. The threshold remains
surprisingly large in the regime of realistic noise bias ratios, for example
28.2(2)% at a bias of 10. The performance is in fact at or near the hashing
bound for all values of the bias. The modified surface code still uses only
weight-4 stabilizers on a square lattice, but merely requires measuring
products of Y instead of Z around the faces, as this doubles the number of
useful syndrome bits associated with the dominant Z errors. Our results
demonstrate that large efficiency gains can be found by appropriately tailoring
codes and decoders to realistic noise models, even under the locality
constraints of topological codes.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, comments welcome; v2 includes minor improvements
to the numerical results, additional references, and an extended discussion;
v3 published version (incorporating supplementary material into main body of
paper
Analysing correlated noise on the surface code using adaptive decoding algorithms
Laboratory hardware is rapidly progressing towards a state where quantum
error-correcting codes can be realised. As such, we must learn how to deal with
the complex nature of the noise that may occur in real physical systems. Single
qubit Pauli errors are commonly used to study the behaviour of error-correcting
codes, but in general we might expect the environment to introduce correlated
errors to a system. Given some knowledge of structures that errors commonly
take, it may be possible to adapt the error-correction procedure to compensate
for this noise, but performing full state tomography on a physical system to
analyse this structure quickly becomes impossible as the size increases beyond
a few qubits. Here we develop and test new methods to analyse blue a particular
class of spatially correlated errors by making use of parametrised families of
decoding algorithms. We demonstrate our method numerically using a diffusive
noise model. We show that information can be learnt about the parameters of the
noise model, and additionally that the logical error rates can be improved. We
conclude by discussing how our method could be utilised in a practical setting
blue and propose extensions of our work to study more general error models.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, comments welcome; v2 - minor typos corrected
some references added; v3 - accepted to Quantu
Code properties from holographic geometries
Almheiri, Dong, and Harlow [arXiv:1411.7041] proposed a highly illuminating
connection between the AdS/CFT holographic correspondence and operator algebra
quantum error correction (OAQEC). Here we explore this connection further. We
derive some general results about OAQEC, as well as results that apply
specifically to quantum codes which admit a holographic interpretation. We
introduce a new quantity called `price', which characterizes the support of a
protected logical system, and find constraints on the price and the distance
for logical subalgebras of quantum codes. We show that holographic codes
defined on bulk manifolds with asymptotically negative curvature exhibit
`uberholography', meaning that a bulk logical algebra can be supported on a
boundary region with a fractal structure. We argue that, for holographic codes
defined on bulk manifolds with asymptotically flat or positive curvature, the
boundary physics must be highly nonlocal, an observation with potential
implications for black holes and for quantum gravity in AdS space at distance
scales small compared to the AdS curvature radius.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure
Fault-tolerance thresholds for the surface code with fabrication errors
The construction of topological error correction codes requires the ability
to fabricate a lattice of physical qubits embedded on a manifold with a
non-trivial topology such that the quantum information is encoded in the global
degrees of freedom (i.e. the topology) of the manifold. However, the
manufacturing of large-scale topological devices will undoubtedly suffer from
fabrication errors---permanent faulty components such as missing physical
qubits or failed entangling gates---introducing permanent defects into the
topology of the lattice and hence significantly reducing the distance of the
code and the quality of the encoded logical qubits. In this work we investigate
how fabrication errors affect the performance of topological codes, using the
surface code as the testbed. A known approach to mitigate defective lattices
involves the use of primitive SWAP gates in a long sequence of syndrome
extraction circuits. Instead, we show that in the presence of fabrication
errors the syndrome can be determined using the supercheck operator approach
and the outcome of the defective gauge stabilizer generators without any
additional computational overhead or the use of SWAP gates. We report numerical
fault-tolerance thresholds in the presence of both qubit fabrication and gate
fabrication errors using a circuit-based noise model and the minimum-weight
perfect matching decoder. Our numerical analysis is most applicable to 2D
chip-based technologies, but the techniques presented here can be readily
extended to other topological architectures. We find that in the presence of 8%
qubit fabrication errors, the surface code can still tolerate a computational
error rate of up to 0.1%.Comment: 10 pages, 15 figure
Tailored codes for small quantum memories
We demonstrate that small quantum memories, realized via quantum error
correction in multi-qubit devices, can benefit substantially by choosing a
quantum code that is tailored to the relevant error model of the system. For a
biased noise model, with independent bit and phase flips occurring at different
rates, we show that a single code greatly outperforms the well-studied Steane
code across the full range of parameters of the noise model, including for
unbiased noise. In fact, this tailored code performs almost optimally when
compared with 10,000 randomly selected stabilizer codes of comparable
experimental complexity. Tailored codes can even outperform the Steane code
with realistic experimental noise, and without any increase in the experimental
complexity, as we demonstrate by comparison in the observed error model in a
recent 7-qubit trapped ion experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, supplementary material; v2 published versio
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