arXiv subjects

Benjamin J. Brown

Publications and source records attributed to Benjamin J. Brown.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Low-overhead quantum computing with the color code

Fault-tolerant quantum computation demands significant resources: large numbers of physical qubits must be checked for errors repeatedly to protect quantum data as logic gates are implemented in the presence of noise. We demonstrate that an approach based on the color code can lead to considerable reductions in the resource overheads compared with conventional methods, while remaining compatible with a two-dimensional layout. We propose a lattice surgery scheme that exploits the rich structure of the color-code phase to perform arbitrary pairs of commuting logical Pauli measurements in parallel while keeping the space cost low. Compared to lattice surgery schemes based on the surface code with the same code distance, our approach yields about a $3\times$ improvement in the space-time overhead, obtained from a combination of a $1.5\times$ improvement in spatial overhead together with a $2\times$ speedup due to the parallelisation of commuting logical measurements. Even when taking into account the color code's lower error threshold using current decoders, the overhead is reduced by 10\% at a physical error rate of $10^{-3}$ and by 50\% at $10^{-4}$.

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arXiv2024

Codesign of quantum error-correcting codes and modular chiplets in the presence of defects

Fabrication errors pose a significant challenge in scaling up solid-state quantum devices to the sizes required for fault-tolerant (FT) quantum applications. To mitigate the resource overhead caused by fabrication errors, we combine two approaches: (1) leveraging the flexibility of a modular architecture, (2) adapting the procedure of quantum error correction (QEC) to account for fabrication defects. We simulate the surface code adapted to qubit arrays with arbitrarily distributed defects to find metrics that characterize how defects affect fidelity. We then determine the impact of defects on the resource overhead of realizing a fault-tolerant quantum computer, on a chiplet-based modular architecture. Our strategy for dealing with fabrication defects demonstrates an exponential suppression of logical failure where error rates of non-faulty physical qubits are ~0.1% in a circuit-based noise model. This is a typical regime where we imagine running the defect-free surface code. We use our numerical results to establish post-selection criteria for building a device from defective chiplets. Using our criteria, we then evaluate the resource overhead in terms of the average number of fabricated physical qubits per logical qubit. We find that an optimal choice of chiplet size, based on the defect rate and target fidelity, is essential to limiting any additional error correction overhead due to defects. When the optimal chiplet size is chosen, at a defect rate of 1% the resource overhead can be reduced to below 3X and 6X respectively for the two defect models we use, for a wide range of target performance. We also determine cutoff fidelity values that help identify whether a qubit should be disabled or kept as part of the error correction code.

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arXiv2024

Encoding a magic state with beyond break-even fidelity

To run large-scale algorithms on a quantum computer, error-correcting codes must be able to perform a fundamental set of operations, called logic gates, while isolating the encoded information from noise~\cite{Harper2019,Ryan-Anderson2021,Egan2021fault, Chen2022calibrated, Sundaresan2022matching, ryananderson2022implementing, Postler2022demonstration, GoogleAI2023}. We can complete a universal set of logic gates by producing special resources called magic states~\cite{Bravyi2005universal,Maier2013magic, Chamberland2022building}. It is therefore important to produce high-fidelity magic states to conduct algorithms while introducing a minimal amount of noise to the computation. Here, we propose and implement a scheme to prepare a magic state on a superconducting qubit array using error correction. We find that our scheme produces better magic states than those we can prepare using the individual qubits of the device. This demonstrates a fundamental principle of fault-tolerant quantum computing~\cite{Shor96}, namely, that we can use error correction to improve the quality of logic gates with noisy qubits. Additionally, we show we can increase the yield of magic states using adaptive circuits, where circuit elements are changed depending on the outcome of mid-circuit measurements. This demonstrates an essential capability we will need for many error-correction subroutines. Our prototype will be invaluable in the future as it can reduce the number of physical qubits needed to produce high-fidelity magic states in large-scale quantum-computing architectures.

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arXiv2024

Anyon condensation and the color code

The manipulation of topologically-ordered phases of matter to encode and process quantum information forms the cornerstone of many approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computing. Here we demonstrate that fault-tolerant logical operations in these approaches can be interpreted as instances of anyon condensation. We present a constructive theory for anyon condensation and, in tandem, illustrate our theory explicitly using the color-code model. We show that different condensation processes are associated with a general class of domain walls, which can exist in both space- and time-like directions. This class includes semi-transparent domain walls that condense certain subsets of anyons. We use our theory to classify topological objects and design novel fault-tolerant logic gates for the color code. As a final example, we also argue that dynamical `Floquet codes' can be viewed as a series of condensation operations. We propose a general construction for realising planar dynamically driven codes based on condensation operations on the color code. We use our construction to introduce a new Calderbank-Shor Steane-type Floquet code that we call the Floquet color code.

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arXiv2024

Conservation laws and quantum error correction: towards a generalised matching decoder

Decoding algorithms are essential to fault-tolerant quantum-computing architectures. In this perspective we explore decoding algorithms for the surface code; a prototypical quantum low-density parity-check code that underlies many of the leading efforts to demonstrate scalable quantum computing. Central to our discussion is the minimum-weight perfect-matching decoder. The decoder works by exploiting underlying structure that arises due to materialised symmetries among surface-code stabilizer elements. By concentrating on these symmetries, we begin to address the question of how a minimum-weight perfect-matching decoder might be generalised for other families of codes. We approach this question first by investigating examples of matching decoders for other codes. These include decoding algorithms that have been specialised to correct for noise models that demonstrate a particular structure or bias with respect to certain codes. In addition to this, we propose a systematic way of constructing a minimum-weight perfect-matching decoder for codes with certain characteristic properties. The properties we make use of are common among topological codes. We discuss the broader applicability of the proposal, and we suggest some questions we can address that may show us how to design a generalised matching decoder for arbitrary stabilizer codes.

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arXiv2023

High-threshold quantum computing by fusing one-dimensional cluster states

We propose a measurement-based model for fault-tolerant quantum computation that can be realised with one-dimensional cluster states and fusion measurements only; basic resources that are readily available with scalable photonic hardware. Our simulations demonstrate high thresholds compared with other measurement-based models realized with basic entangled resources and two-qubit fusion measurements. Its high tolerance to noise indicates that our practical construction offers a promising route to scalable quantum computing with quantum emitters and linear-optical elements.

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arXiv2023

Quantum computing is scalable on a planar array of qubits with fabrication defects

To successfully execute large-scale algorithms, a quantum computer will need to perform its elementary operations near perfectly. This is a fundamental challenge since all physical qubits suffer a considerable level of noise. Moreover, real systems are likely to have a finite yield, i.e. some non-zero proportion of the components in a complex device may be irredeemably broken at the fabrication stage. We present a threshold theorem showing that an arbitrarily large quantum computation can be completed with a vanishing probability of failure using a two-dimensional array of noisy qubits with a finite density of fabrication defects. To complete our proof we introduce a robust protocol to measure high-weight stabilizers to compensate for large regions of inactive qubits. We obtain our result using a surface code architecture. Our approach is therefore readily compatible with ongoing experimental efforts to build a large-scale quantum computer.

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arXiv2023

Improving trapped-ion-qubit memories via code-mediated error-channel balancing

The high-fidelity storage of quantum information is crucial for quantum computation and communication. Many experimental platforms for these applications exhibit highly biased noise, with good resilience to spin depolarisation undermined by high dephasing rates. In this work, we demonstrate that the memory performance of a noise-biased trapped-ion qubit memory can be greatly improved by incorporating error correction of dephasing errors through teleportation of the information between two repetition codes written on a pair of qubit registers in the same trap. While the technical requirements of error correction are often considerable, we show that our protocol can be achieved with a single global entangling phase gate of remarkably low fidelity, leveraging the fact that the gate errors are also dominated by dephasing-type processes. By rebalancing the logical spin-flip and dephasing error rates, we show that for realistic parameters our memory can exhibit error rates up to two orders of magnitude lower than the unprotected physical qubits, thus providing a useful means of improving memory performance in trapped ion systems where field-insensitive qubits are not available.

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arXiv2023

A cellular automaton decoder for a noise-bias tailored color code

Self-correcting quantum memories demonstrate robust properties that can be exploited to improve active quantum error-correction protocols. Here we propose a cellular automaton decoder for a variation of the color code where the bases of the physical qubits are locally rotated, which we call the XYZ color code. The local transformation means our decoder demonstrates key properties of a two-dimensional fractal code if the noise acting on the system is infinitely biased towards dephasing, namely, no string-like logical operators. As such, in the high-bias limit, our local decoder reproduces the behavior of a partially self-correcting memory. At low error rates, our simulations show that the memory time diverges polynomially with system size without intervention from a global decoder, up to some critical system size that grows as the error rate is lowered. Furthermore, although we find that we cannot reproduce partially self-correcting behavior at finite bias, our numerics demonstrate improved memory times at realistic noise biases. Our results therefore motivate the design of tailored cellular automaton decoders that help to reduce the bandwidth demands of global decoding for realistic noise models.

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arXiv2022

The XP Stabiliser Formalism: a Generalisation of the Pauli Stabiliser Formalism with Arbitrary Phases

We propose an extension to the Pauli stabiliser formalism that includes fractional $2π/N$ rotations around the $Z$ axis for some integer $N$. The resulting generalised stabiliser formalism - denoted the XP stabiliser formalism - allows for a wider range of states and codespaces to be represented. We describe the states which arise in the formalism, and demonstrate an equivalence between XP stabiliser states and 'weighted hypergraph states' - a generalisation of both hypergraph and weighted graph states. Given an arbitrary set of XP operators, we present algorithms for determining the codespace and logical operators for an XP code. Finally, we consider whether measurements of XP operators on XP codes can be classically simulated.

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arXiv2022

A local pre-decoder to reduce the bandwidth and latency of quantum error correction

A fault-tolerant quantum computer will be supported by a classical decoding system interfacing with quantum hardware to perform quantum error correction. It is important that the decoder can keep pace with the quantum clock speed, within the limitations on communication that are imposed by the physical architecture. To this end we propose a local `pre-decoder', which makes greedy corrections to reduce the amount of syndrome data sent to a standard matching decoder. We study these classical overheads for the surface code under a phenomenological phase-flip noise model with imperfect measurements. We find substantial improvements in the runtime of the global decoder and the communication bandwidth by using the pre-decoder. For instance, to achieve a logical failure probability of $f = 10^{-15}$ using qubits with physical error rate $p = 10^{-3}$ and a distance $d=22$ code, we find that the bandwidth cost is reduced by a factor of $1000$, and the time taken by a matching decoder is sped up by a factor of $200$. To achieve this target failure probability, the pre-decoding approach requires a $50\%$ increase in the qubit count compared with the optimal decoder.

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arXiv2022

Low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing using long-range connectivity

Vast numbers of qubits will be needed for large-scale quantum computing due to the overheads associated with error correction. We present a scheme for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation based on quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, where long-range interactions enable many logical qubits to be encoded with a modest number of physical qubits. In our approach, logic gates operate via logical Pauli measurements that preserve both the protection of the LDPC codes as well as the low overheads in terms of the required number of additional qubits. Compared with surface codes with the same code distance, we estimate order-of-magnitude improvements in the overheads for processing around one hundred logical qubits using this approach. Given the high thresholds demonstrated by LDPC codes, our estimates suggest that fault-tolerant quantum computation at this scale may be achievable with a few thousand physical qubits at comparable error rates to what is needed for current approaches.

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arXiv2022

A 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 Möbius 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, $\sim p^{α\sqrt{n}}$, with $α\approx 6 / 7 \sqrt{3} \approx 0.5$, 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.

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arXiv2021

Practical quantum error correction with the XZZX code and Kerr-cat qubits

The development of robust architectures capable of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation should consider both their quantum error-correcting codes, and the underlying physical qubits upon which they are built, in tandem. Following this design principle we demonstrate remarkable error correction performance by concatenating the XZZX surface code with Kerr-cat qubits. We contrast several variants of fault-tolerant systems undergoing different circuit noise models that reflect the physics of Kerr-cat qubits. Our simulations show that our system is scalable below a threshold gate infidelity of $p_\mathrm{CX} \sim 6.5\%$ within a physically reasonable parameter regime, where $p_\mathrm{CX}$ is the infidelity of the noisiest gate of our system; the controlled-not gate. This threshold can be reached in a superconducting circuit architecture with a Kerr-nonlinearity of $10$MHz, a $\sim 6.25$ photon cat qubit, single-photon lifetime of $\gtrsim 64μ$s, and thermal photon population $\lesssim 8\%$. Such parameters are routinely achieved in superconducting circuits.

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arXiv2021

High-Fidelity Magic-State Preparation with a Biased-Noise Architecture

Magic state distillation is a resource intensive subroutine that consumes noisy input states to produce high-fidelity resource states that are used to perform logical operations in practical quantum-computing architectures. The resource cost of magic state distillation can be reduced by improving the fidelity of the raw input states. To this end, we propose an initialization protocol that offers a quadratic improvement in the error rate of the input magic states in architectures with biased noise. This is achieved by preparing an error-detecting code which detects the dominant errors that occur during state preparation. We obtain this advantage by exploiting the native gate operations of an underlying qubit architecture that experiences biases in its noise profile. We perform simulations to analyze the performance of our protocol with the XZZX surface code. Even at modest physical parameters with a two-qubit gate error rate of $0.7\%$ and total probability of dominant errors in the gate $O(10^3)$ larger compared to that of non-dominant errors, we find that our preparation scheme delivers magic states with logical error rate $O(10^{-8})$ after a single round of the standard 15-to-1 distillation protocol; two orders of magnitude lower than using conventional state preparation. Our approach therefore promises considerable savings in overheads with near-term technology.

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arXiv2021

Boundary topological entanglement entropy in two and three dimensions

The topological entanglement entropy is used to measure long-range quantum correlations in the ground state of topological phases. Here we obtain closed form expressions for topological entropy of (2+1)- and (3+1)-dimensional loop gas models, both in the bulk and at their boundaries, in terms of the data of their input fusion categories and algebra objects. Central to the formulation of our results are generalized $\mathcal{S}$-matrices. We conjecture a general property of these $\mathcal{S}$-matrices, with proofs provided in many special cases. This includes constructive proofs for categories up to rank 5.

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arXiv2021

Correcting spanning errors with a fractal code

The strongly correlated systems we use to realise quantum error-correcting codes may give rise to high-weight, problematic errors. Encouragingly, we can expect local quantum error-correcting codes with no string-like logical operators $-$ such as the cubic code $-$ to be robust to highly correlated, one-dimensional errors that span their lattice. The challenge remains to design decoding algorithms that utilise the high distance of these codes. Here, we begin the development of such algorithms by proposing an efficient decoder for the `Fibonacci code'; a two-dimensional classical code that mimics the fractal nature of the cubic code. Our iterative decoder finds a correction through repeated use of minimum-weight perfect matching by exploiting symmetries of the code. We perform numerical experiments that show our decoder is robust to one-dimensional, correlated errors. First, using a bit-flip noise model at low error rates, we find that our decoder demonstrates a logical failure rate that scales super exponentially in the linear size of the lattice. In contrast, a decoder that could not tolerate spanning errors would not achieve this rapid decay in failure rate with increasing system size. We also find a finite threshold using a spanning noise model that introduces string-like errors that stretch along full rows and columns of the lattice. These results provide direct evidence that our decoder is robust to one-dimensional, correlated errors that span the lattice.

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arXiv2021

The XZZX Surface Code

Performing large calculations with a quantum computer will likely require a fault-tolerant architecture based on quantum error-correcting codes. The challenge is to design practical quantum error-correcting codes that perform well against realistic noise using modest resources. Here we show that a variant of the surface code -- the XZZX code -- offers remarkable performance for fault-tolerant quantum computation. The error threshold of this code matches what can be achieved with random codes (hashing) for every single-qubit Pauli noise channel; it is the first explicit code shown to have this universal property. We present numerical evidence that the threshold even exceeds this hashing bound for an experimentally relevant range of noise parameters. Focusing on the common situation where qubit dephasing is the dominant noise, we show that this code has a practical, high-performance decoder and surpasses all previously known thresholds in the realistic setting where syndrome measurements are unreliable. We go on to demonstrate the favourable sub-threshold resource scaling that can be obtained by specialising a code to exploit structure in the noise. We show that it is possible to maintain all of these advantages when we perform fault-tolerant quantum computation.

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