Quantum error-correction failure distributions: Comparison of coherent and stochastic error models

Abstract

We compare failure distributions of quantum error correction circuits for stochastic errors and coherent errors. We utilize a fully coherent simulation of a fault tolerant quantum error correcting circuit for a $d=3$ Steane and surface code. We find that the output distributions are markedly different for the two error models, showing that no simple mapping between the two error models exists. Coherent errors create very broad and heavy-tailed failure distributions. This suggests that they are susceptible to outlier events and that mean statistics, such as pseudo-threshold estimates, may not provide the key figure of merit. This provides further statistical insight into why coherent errors can be so harmful for quantum error correction. These output probability distributions may also provide a useful metric that can be utilized when optimizing quantum error correcting codes and decoding procedures for purely coherent errors.