Fault-tolerant Error Correction Research Articles

Adaptive syndrome measurements for Shor-style error correction

The Shor fault-tolerant error correction (FTEC) scheme uses transversal gates and ancilla qubits prepared in the cat state in syndrome extraction circuits to prevent propagation of errors caused by gate faults. For a stabilizer code of distance d that can correct up to t=⌊(d−1)/2⌋ errors, the traditional Shor scheme handles ancilla preparation and measurement faults by performing syndrome measurements until the syndromes are repeated t+1 times in a row; in the worst-case scenario, (t+1)2 rounds of measurements are required. In this work, we improve the Shor FTEC scheme using an adaptive syndrome measurement technique. The syndrome for error correction is determined based on information from the differences of syndromes obtained from consecutive rounds. Our protocols that satisfy the strong and the weak FTEC conditions require no more than (t+3)2/4−1 rounds and (t+3)2/4−2 rounds, respectively, and are applicable to any stabilizer code. Our simulations of FTEC protocols with the adaptive schemes on hexagonal color codes of small distances verify that our protocols preserve the code distance, can increase the pseudothreshold, and can decrease the average number of rounds compared to the traditional Shor scheme. We also find that for the code of distance d, our FTEC protocols with the adaptive schemes require no more than d rounds on average.

Probabilistic error cancellation with sparse Pauli–Lindblad models on noisy quantum processors

Noise in quantum computers can result in biased estimates of physical observables. Accurate bias-free estimates can be obtained using probabilistic error cancellation, an error-mitigation technique that effectively inverts well-characterized noise channels. Learning correlated noise channels in large quantum circuits, however, has been a major challenge and has severely hampered experimental realizations. Our work presents a practical protocol for learning and inverting a sparse noise model that is able to capture correlated noise and scales to large quantum devices. These advances allow us to demonstrate probabilistic error cancellation on a superconducting quantum processor, thereby providing a way to measure noise-free observables at larger circuit volumes. Probabilistic error cancellation could improve the performance of quantum computers without the prohibitive overhead of fault-tolerant error correction. The method has now been demonstrated on a device with 20 qubits.

Fault-tolerant error correction for quantum Hamming codes with only two ancillary qudits

Fault-tolerant error correction for quantum Hamming codes with only two ancillary qudits

Decoder for the Triangular Color Code by Matching on a Möbius Strip

The color code is remarkable for its ability to perform fault-tolerant logic gates. This motivates the design of practical decoders that minimise the resource cost of color-code quantum computation. Here we propose a decoder for the planar color code with a triangular boundary where we match syndrome defects on a nontrivial manifold that has the topology of a M\"{o}bius strip. A basic implementation of our decoder used on the color code with hexagonal lattice geometry demonstrates a logical failure rate that is competitive with the optimal performance of the surface code, $\sim p^{\alpha \sqrt{n}}$, with $\alpha \approx 6 / 7 \sqrt{3} \approx 0.5$, error rate $p$, and $n$ the code length. Furthermore, by exhaustively testing over five billion error configurations, we find that a modification of our decoder that manually compares inequivalent recovery operators can correct all errors of weight $\le (d-1) /2$ for codes with distance $d \le 13$. Our decoder is derived using relations among the stabilizers that preserve global conservation laws at the lattice boundary. We present generalisations of our method to depolarising noise and fault-tolerant error correction, as well as to Majorana surface codes, higher-dimensional color codes and single-shot error correction.

Beyond Single-Shot Fault-Tolerant Quantum Error Correction

Extensive quantum error correction is necessary in order to perform a useful computation on a noisy quantum computer. Moreover, quantum error correction must be implemented based on imperfect parity check measurements that may return incorrect outcomes or inject additional faults into the qubits. To achieve fault-tolerant error correction, Shor proposed to repeat the sequence of parity check measurements until the same outcome is observed sufficiently many times. Then, one can use this information to perform error correction. A basic implementation of this fault tolerance strategy requires $\Omega(r d^2)$ parity check measurements for a distance-d code defined by r parity checks. For some specific highly structured quantum codes, Bombin has shown that single-shot fault-tolerant quantum error correction is possible using only r measurements. In this work, we demonstrate that fault-tolerant quantum error correction can be achieved using $O(d \log(d))$ measurements for any code with distance $d \geq \Omega(n^\alpha)$ for some constant $\alpha > 0$. Moreover, we prove the existence of a sub-single-shot fault-tolerant quantum error correction scheme using fewer than r measurements. In some cases, the number of parity check measurements required for fault-tolerant quantum error correction is exponentially smaller than the number of parity checks defining the code.

Low-overhead fault-tolerant error correction scheme based on quantum stabilizer codes

Fault-tolerant error-correction (FTEC) circuit is the foundation for achieving reliable quantum computation and remote communication. However, designing a fault-tolerant error correction scheme with a solid error-correction ability and low overhead remains a significant challenge. In this paper, a low-overhead fault-tolerant error correction scheme is proposed for quantum communication systems. Firstly, syndrome ancillas are prepared into Bell states to detect errors caused by channel noise. We propose a detection approach that reduces the propagation path of quantum gate fault and reduces the circuit depth by splitting the stabilizer generator into X-type and Z-type. Additionally, a syndrome extraction circuit is equipped with two flag qubits to detect quantum gate faults, which may also introduce errors into the code block during the error detection process. Finally, analytical results are provided to demonstrate the fault-tolerant performance of the proposed FTEC scheme with the lower overhead of the ancillary qubits and circuit depth.

A polynomial time and space heuristic algorithm for T-count

An important part of reaping computational advantage from a quantum computer is to reduce the quantum resources needed to implement a desired quantum algorithm. Quantum algorithms that are too large to be practical on noisy intermediate scale quantum devices will require fault-tolerant error correction. This work focuses on reducing the physical cost of implementing quantum algorithms when using the state-of-the-art fault-tolerant quantum error correcting codes, in particular, those for which implementing the T gate consumes vastly more resources than the other gates in the gate set. More specifically, in this paper we consider the group of unitaries that can be exactly implemented by a quantum circuit consisting of the Clifford + T gate set. The Clifford + T gate set is a universal gate set and in this group, using state-of-the-art surface codes, the T gate is by far the most expensive component to implement fault-tolerantly. So it is important to minimize the number of T gates necessary for a fault-tolerant implementation. Our primary interest is to compute a circuit for a given n-qubit unitary U, using the minimum possible number of T gates (called the T-count of unitary U). We consider the problem COUNT-T, the optimization version of which aims to find the T-count of U. In its decision version the goal is to decide if the T-count is at most some positive integer m. Given an oracle for COUNT-T, we can compute a T-count-optimal circuit in time polynomial in the T-count and dimension of U. We give a provable classical algorithm that solves COUNT-T (decision) in time and space , where N = 2 n and c ⩾ 2. This gives a space-time trade-off for solving this problem with variants of meet-in-the-middle techniques. We also introduce an asymptotically faster multiplication method that shaves a factor of N 0.7457 off of the overall complexity. Lastly, beyond our improvements to the rigorous algorithm, we give a heuristic algorithm that outputs a T-count-optimal circuit and has space and time complexity poly(m, N), under some assumptions. In our heuristic algorithm we developed a novel way of pruning the search space. While our heuristic method still scales exponentially with the number of qubits (though with a lower exponent), there is a large improvement by going from exponential to polynomial scaling with m. We implemented our heuristic algorithm with up to 4 qubit unitaries and obtained a significant improvement in time. For all benchmark and random unitaries we studied, the T-count returned by our algorithm is at most the T-count of their circuits shown in previous papers.

Fault-tolerant quantum error correction using error weight parities

In quantum error correction using imperfect primitives, errors of high weight arising from a few faults are major concerns since they might not be correctable by the quantum error correcting code. Fortunately, some errors of different weights are logically equivalent and the same correction procedure is applicable to all equivalent errors, thus correcting high-weight errors is sometimes possible. In this work, we introduce a technique called weight parity error correction (WPEC) which can correct Pauli error of any weight in some stabilizer codes provided that the parity of the weight of the error is known. We show that the technique is applicable to concatenated codes constructed from the [[7,1,3]] Steane code or the [[23,1,7]] Golay code. We also provide a fault-tolerant error correction protocol using WPEC for the [[49,1,9]] concatenated Steane code which can correct up to 3 faults and requires only 2 ancillas.

Determining quantum phase diagrams of topological Kitaev-inspired models on NISQ quantum hardware

Topological protection is employed in fault-tolerant error correction and in developing quantum algorithms with topological qubits. But, topological protection intrinsic to models being simulated, also robustly protects calculations, even on NISQ hardware. We leverage it by simulating Kitaev-inspired models on IBM quantum computers and accurately determining their phase diagrams. This requires constructing conventional quantum circuits for Majorana braiding to prepare the ground states of Kitaev-inspired models. The entanglement entropy is then measured to calculate the quantum phase boundaries. We show how maintaining particle-hole symmetry when sampling through the Brillouin zone is critical to obtaining high accuracy. This work illustrates how topological protection intrinsic to a quantum model can be employed to perform robust calculations on NISQ hardware, when one measures the appropriate protected quantum properties. It opens the door for further simulation of topological quantum models on quantum hardware available today.

Research progress of measurement-based quantum computation

Compared with the quantum gate circuit model, the measurement-based quantum computing model provides an alternative way to realize universal quantum computation, and relevant contents have been greatly enriched after nearly two decades of research and exploration. In this article, we review the research history and status of the measurement-based quantum computing model. First, we briefly introduce the basic theories of this model, including the concept and working principles of quantum graph states as resource states, the model’s computational universality and classical simulation methods, and relevant applications in the field of quantum information processing such as designing quantum algorithms and fault-tolerant error correction schemes. Then, from the perspective of quantum physical properties, which include the specific roles of quantum entanglement, contextuality, quantum correlations, symmetry-protected topological order, and quantum phases of matter as computing resources, the close relationship between measurement-based quantum computing model and quantum many-body system is presented. For example, a type of measurement-based computing model for exploiting quantum correlations can show a quantum advantage over the classical local hidden variable models, or certain symmetry-protected topological order states enable the universal quantum computation to be conducted by using only the measurements of single-qubit Pauli operators. Next, a variety of different technical routes and experimental progress of realizing the measurement-based quantum computing model are summarized, such as photonic systems, ion traps, superconducting circuits, etc. These achievements in various physical areas lay the foundation for future scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computers. Finally, we discuss and prospect the future research directions in this field thereby inspiring readers to further study and explore the relevant subjects.

Topological and Subsystem Codes on Low-Degree Graphs with Flag Qubits

In this work we introduce two code families, which we call the heavy hexagon code and heavy square code. Both code families are implemented by assigning physical data and ancilla qubits to both vertices and edges of low degree graphs. Such a layout is particularly suitable for superconducting qubit architectures to minimize frequency collisions and crosstalk. In some cases, frequency collisions can be reduced by several orders of magnitude. The heavy hexagon code is a hybrid surface/Bacon-Shor code mapped onto a (heavy) hexagonal lattice whereas the heavy square code is the surface code mapped onto a (heavy) square lattice. In both cases, the lattice includes all the ancilla qubits required for fault-tolerant error-correction. Naively, the limited qubit connectivity might be thought to limit the error-correcting capability of the code to less than its full distance. Therefore, essential to our construction is the use of flag qubits. We modify minimum weight perfect matching decoding to efficiently and scalably incorporate information from measurements of the flag qubits and correct up to the full code distance while respecting the limited connectivity. Simulations show that high threshold values for both codes can be obtained using our decoding protocol. Further, our decoding scheme can be adapted to other topological code families.

Flag fault-tolerant error correction, measurement, and quantum computation for cyclic Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes

Flag qubits have recently been proposed in syndrome extraction circuits to detect high-weight errors arising from fewer faults. The use of flag qubits allows the construction of fault-tolerant protocols with the fewest number of ancillas known to-date. In this work, we prove some critical properties of CSS codes constructed from classical cyclic codes that enable the construction of a flag fault-tolerant error correction scheme. We then develop fault-tolerant protocols as well as a family of circuits for flag fault-tolerant error correction and operator measurement, requiring only four ancilla qubits and applicable to cyclic CSS codes of distance 3. The measurement protocol can be further used for logical Clifford gate implementation via quantum gate teleportation. We also provide examples of cyclic CSS codes with large encoding rates.

Parallel entangling operations on a universal ion-trap quantum computer.

The circuit model of a quantum computer consists of sequences of gate operations between quantum bits (qubits), drawn from a universal family of discrete operations1. The ability to execute parallel entangling quantum gates offers efficiency gains in numerous quantum circuits2-4, as well as for entire algorithms-such as Shor's factoring algorithm5-and quantum simulations6,7. In circuits such as full adders and multiple-control Toffoli gates, parallelism can provide an exponential improvement in overall execution time through the divide-and-conquer technique8. More importantly, quantum gate parallelism is essential for fault-tolerant error correction of qubits that suffer from idle errors9,10. However, the implementation of parallel quantum gates is complicated by potential crosstalk, especially between qubits that are fully connected by a common-mode bus, such as in Coulomb-coupled trapped atomic ions11,12 or cavity-coupled superconducting transmons13. Here we present experimental results for parallel two-qubit entangling gates in an array of fully connected trapped 171Yb+ ion qubits. We perform a one-bit full-addition operation on a quantum computer using a depth-four quantum circuit4,14,15, where circuit depth denotes the number of runtime steps required. Our method exploits the power of highly connected qubit systems using classical control techniques and will help to speed up quantum circuits and achieve fault tolerance in trapped-ion quantum computers.

Accounting for errors in quantum algorithms via individual error reduction

We discuss a surprisingly simple scheme for accounting (and removal) of error in observables determined from quantum algorithms. A correction to the value of the observable is calculated by first measuring the observable with all error sources active and subsequently measuring the observable with each error source reduced separately. We apply this scheme to the variational quantum eigensolver, simulating the calculation of the ground state energy of equilibrium H2 and LiH in the presence of several noise sources, including amplitude damping, dephasing, thermal noise, and correlated noise. We show that this scheme provides a decrease in the needed quality of the qubits by up to two orders of magnitude. In near-term quantum computing, where full fault-tolerant error correction is too expensive, this scheme provides a route to significantly more accurate calculations.

Deep neural decoders for near term fault-tolerant experiments

Finding efficient decoders for quantum error correcting codes adapted to realistic experimental noise in fault-tolerant devices represents a significant challenge. In this paper we introduce several decoding algorithms complemented by deep neural decoders (DND) and apply them to analyze several fault-tolerant error correction (EC) protocols such as the surface code as well as Steane and Knill EC. Our methods require no knowledge of the underlying noise model afflicting the quantum device making them appealing for real-world experiments. Our analysis is based on a full circuit-level noise model. It considers both distance-three and five codes, and is performed near the codes pseudo-threshold regime. Training DND in low noise rate regimes appears to be a challenging machine learning endeavour. We provide a detailed description of our neural network architectures and training methodology. We then discuss both the advantages and limitations of DND. Lastly, we provide a rigorous analysis of the decoding runtime of trained DND and compare our methods with anticipated gate times in future quantum devices. Given the broad applications of our decoding schemes, we believe that the methods presented in this paper could have practical applications for near term fault-tolerant experiments.

Flag fault-tolerant error correction with arbitrary distance codes

In this paper we introduce a general fault-tolerant quantum error correction protocol using flag circuits for measuring stabilizers of arbitrary distance codes. In addition to extending flag error correction beyond distance-three codes for the first time, our protocol also applies to a broader class of distance-three codes than was previously known. Flag circuits use extra ancilla qubits to signal when errors resulting fromvfaults in the circuit have weight greater thanv. The flag error correction protocol is applicable to stabilizer codes of arbitrary distance which satisfy a set of conditions and uses fewer qubits than other schemes such as Shor, Steane and Knill error correction. We give examples of infinite code families which satisfy these conditions and analyze the behaviour of distance-three and -five examples numerically. Requiring fewer resources than Shor error correction, flag error correction could potentially be used in low-overhead fault-tolerant error correction protocols using low density parity check quantum codes of large code length.

Fault-tolerant, high-level quantum circuits: form, compilation and description

Fault-tolerant quantum error correction is a necessity for any quantum architecture destined to tackle interesting, large-scale problems. Its theoretical formalism has been well founded for nearly two decades. However, we still do not have an appropriate compiler to produce a fault-tolerant, error-corrected description from a higher-level quantum circuit for state-of the-art hardware models. There are many technical hurdles, including dynamic circuit constructions that occur when constructing fault-tolerant circuits with commonly used error correcting codes. We introduce a package that converts high-level quantum circuits consisting of commonly used gates into a form employing all decompositions and ancillary protocols needed for fault-tolerant error correction. We call this form the (I)initialisation, (C)NOT, (M)measurement form (ICM) and consists of an initialisation layer of qubits into one of four distinct states, a massive, deterministic array of CNOT operations and a series of time-ordered X- or Z-basis measurements. The form allows a more flexible approach towards circuit optimisation. At the same time, the package outputs a standard circuit or a canonical geometric description which is a necessity for operating current state-of-the-art hardware architectures using topological quantum codes.

Leakage suppression in the toric code

Quantum codes excel at correcting local noise but fail to correct leakage faults that excite qubits to states outside the computational space. Aliferis and Terhal \cite{aliferis07} have shown that an accuracy threshold exists for leakage faults using gadgets called leakage reduction units (LRUs). However, these gadgets reduce the accuracy threshold and increase overhead and experimental complexity, and these costs have not been thoroughly understood. We explore a variety of techniques for leakage-resilient, fault-tolerant error correction in topological codes. Our contributions are threefold. First, we develop a leakage model that is physically motivated and efficient to simulate. Second, we use Monte-Carlo simulations to survey several syndrome extraction circuits. Third, given the capability to perform 3-outcome measurements, we present a dramatically improved syndrome processing algorithm. Our simulations show that simple circuits with one extra CNOT per check operator and no additional ancillas reduce the accuracy threshold by less than a factor of $4$ when leakage and depolarizing noise rates are comparable. This becomes a factor of $2$ when the decoder uses 3-outcome measurements. Finally, when the physical error rate is less than $2\times 10^{-4}$, placing LRUs after every gate may achieve the lowest logical error rates of all of the circuits we considered. We anticipate that the closely related planar codes might exhibit the same accuracy thresholds and that the ideas may generalize naturally to other topological codes.

Universal Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Only Transversal Gates and Error Correction

Transversal implementations of encoded unitary gates are highly desirable for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Though transversal gates alone cannot be computationally universal, they can be combined with specially distilled resource states in order to achieve universality. We show that "triorthogonal" stabilizer codes, introduced for state distillation by Bravyi and Haah [Phys. Rev. A 86, 052329 (2012)], admit transversal implementation of the controlled-controlled-Z gate. We then construct a universal set of fault-tolerant gates without state distillation by using only transversal controlled-controlled-Z, transversal Hadamard, and fault-tolerant error correction. We also adapt the distillation procedure of Bravyi and Haah to Toffoli gates, improving on existing Toffoli distillation schemes.

Fidelity of an encoded [7,1,3] logical zero

I calculate the fidelity of a $[7,1,3]$ Calderbank-Shor-Steane quantum error correction code logical zero state constructed in a nonequiprobable Pauli operator error environment for two methods of encoding. The first method is to apply fault-tolerant error correction to an arbitrary state of seven qubits utilizing Shor states for syndrome measurement. The Shor states are themselves constructed in the nonequiprobable Pauli operator error environment, and their fidelity depends on the number of verifications done to ensure multiple errors will not propagate into the encoded quantum information. Surprisingly, performing these verifications may lower the fidelity of the constructed Shor states. The second encoding method is to simply implement the $[7,1,3]$ encoding gate sequence also in the nonequiprobable Pauli operator error environment. Perfect error correction is applied after both methods to determine the correctability of the implemented errors. I find that which method attains higher fidelity depends on which of the Pauli operators errors is dominant. Nevertheless, perfect error correction applied after the encoding suppresses errors to at least first order for both methods.