arXiv subjects

Michael Mills

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Mills.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Experimental validation of a compact fault-tolerant architecture for trapped ions

Quantum error correction (QEC) is beginning to enable logical operations that outperform their unencoded physical counterparts, but useful fault-tolerant computation will require more than low-error quantum memory. An effective architecture must orchestrate efficient logical encoding, low-overhead logical operations, and access to the non-Clifford resources required for universal computation. Here, we introduce and experimentally validate such an architecture based on the $[[20,2,6]]$ $C_4$-Helix code, designed for the early fault-tolerant regime. Using Quantinuum Helios, a 98-qubit trapped-ion quantum processor, we experimentally demonstrate the principal components of this architecture: we perform repeated quantum error correction with an error of $4.6^{+6.2}_{-2.6}\times10^{-5}$ per logical qubit per QEC cycle. We benchmark the complete Clifford group on the two logical qubits of a single codeblock under active error correction, obtaining an error of $2.8^{+1.0}_{-1.6}\times 10^{-4}$ per two-qubit logical Clifford. We further demonstrate a fault-tolerant chain-map interface between $C_4$-Helix and a distance-5 surface code, preparing a heterogeneous three-logical-qubit GHZ state with a fidelity lower bound of $99.925^{+0.068}_{-0.245}\%$. In each case, the encoded implementation outperforms its corresponding unencoded physical baseline without relying on postselection. Circuit-level simulations indicate that improvements in physical fidelity bring the same architecture into the $10^{-6}$-$10^{-8}$ logical-error regime targeted for early fault-tolerant computation. Together, these results establish $C_4$-Helix as a hardware-validated fault-tolerant architecture rather than a bare quantum memory.

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arXiv2026

Computing with many encoded logical qubits beyond break-even

High-rate quantum error correcting (QEC) codes encode many logical qubits in a given number of physical qubits, making them promising candidates for quantum computation. Implementing high-rate codes at a scale that both frustrates classical computing and improves performance by encoding requires both high fidelity gates and long-range qubit connectivity -- both of which are offered by trapped-ion quantum computers. Here, we demonstrate computations that outperform their unencoded counterparts in the high-rate $[[ k+2,\, k,\, 2 ]]$ iceberg quantum error detecting (QED) and $[[ (k_2 + 2)(k_1 + 2),\, k_2k_1,\, 4 ]]$ two-level concatenated iceberg QEC codes, using the 98-qubit Quantinuum Helios trapped-ion quantum processor. Utilizing new gadgets for encoded operations, we realize this "beyond break-even" performance with reasonable postselection rates across a range of fault-tolerant (FT) and partially-fault-tolerant (pFT) component and application benchmarks with between $48$ and $94$ logical qubits. These benchmarks include FT state preparation and measurement, QEC cycle benchmarking, logical gate benchmarking, GHZ state preparation, and a pFT quantum simulation of the three-dimensional $XY$ model of quantum magnetism. Additionally, we illustrate that postselection rates can be suppressed by increasing the code distance via concatenation. Our results represent state-of-the-art logical component and state fidelities and provide evidence that high-rate QED/QEC codes are viable on contemporary quantum computers for near-term beyond-classical-scale computation.

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arXiv2026

Universal Gates from Braiding and Fusing Anyons on Quantum Hardware

Topological quantum computation encodes quantum information in the internal fusion space of non-Abelian anyonic quasiparticles, whose braiding implements logical gates. This goes beyond Abelian topological order (TO) such as the toric code, as its anyons lack internal structure. However, the simplest non-Abelian generalizations of the toric code do not support universality via braiding alone. Here we demonstrate that such minimally non-Abelian TOs can be made universal by treating anyon fusion as a computational primitive. We prepare a 54-qubit TO wavefunction associated with the smallest non-Abelian group, $S_3$, on Quantinuum's H2 quantum processor. This phase of matter exhibits cyclic anyon fusion rules, known to underpin universality, which we evidence by trapping a single non-Abelian anyon on the torus. We encode logical qutrits in the nonlocal fusion space of non-Abelian fluxes and, by combining an entangling braiding operation with anyon charge measurements, realize a universal topological gate set and read-out, which we further demonstrate by topologically preparing a magic state. This work establishes $S_3$ TO as simple enough to be prepared efficiently, yet rich enough to enable universal topological quantum computation.

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arXiv2025

Certified randomness amplification by dynamically probing remote random quantum states

Cryptography depends on truly unpredictable numbers, but physical sources emit biased or correlated bits. Quantum mechanics enables the amplification of imperfect randomness into nearly perfect randomness, but prior demonstrations have required physically co-located, loophole-free Bell tests, constraining the feasibility of remote operation. Here we realize certified randomness amplification across a network by dynamically probing large, entangled quantum states on Quantinuum's 98-qubit Helios trapped-ion quantum processor. Our protocol is secure even if the remote device acts maliciously or is compromised by an intercepting adversary, provided the samples are generated quickly enough to preclude classical simulation of the quantum circuits. We stream quantum gates in real time to the quantum processor, maintain quantum state coherence for $\approx 0.9$ seconds, and then reveal the measurement bases to the quantum processor only milliseconds before measurement. This limits the time for classical spoofing to 30 ms and constrains the location of hypothetical adversaries to a $4{,}500$ km radius. We achieve a fidelity of 0.586 on random circuits with 64 qubits and 276 two-qubit gates, enabling the amplification of realistic imperfect randomness with a low entropy rate into nearly perfect randomness.

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arXiv2025

Realization of a Quantum Streaming Algorithm on Long-lived Trapped-ion Qubits

Large classical datasets are often processed in the streaming model, with data arriving one item at a time. In this model, quantum algorithms have been shown to offer an unconditional exponential advantage in space. However, experimentally implementing such streaming algorithms requires qubits that remain coherent while interacting with an external data stream. In this work, we realize such a data-streaming model using Quantinuum Helios trapped-ion quantum computer with long-lived qubits that communicate with an external server. We implement a quantum pair sketch, which is the primitive underlying many quantum streaming algorithms, and use it to solve Hidden Matching, a problem known to exhibit a theoretical exponential quantum advantage in space. Furthermore, we compile the quantum streaming algorithm to fault-tolerant quantum architectures based on surface and bivariate bicycle codes and show that the quantum space advantage persists even with the overheads of fault-tolerance.

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arXiv2025

Superconducting pairing correlations on a trapped-ion quantum computer

The Fermi-Hubbard model is the starting point for the simulation of many strongly correlated materials, including high-temperature superconductors, whose modelling is a key motivation for the construction of quantum simulation and computing devices. However, the detection of superconducting pairing correlations has so far remained out of reach, both because of their off-diagonal character - which makes them inaccessible to local density measurements - and because of the difficulty of preparing superconducting states. Here, we report measurement of significant pairing correlations in three different regimes of Fermi-Hubbard models simulated on Quantinuum's Helios trapped-ion quantum computer. Specifically, we measure non-equilibrium pairing induced by an electromagnetic field in the half-filled square lattice model, d-wave pairing in an approximate ground state of the checkerboard Hubbard model at $1/6$-doping, and s-wave pairing in a bilayer model relevant to nickelate superconductors. These results show that a quantum computer can reliably create and probe physically relevant states with superconducting pairing correlations, opening a path to the exploration of superconductivity with quantum computers.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Error-Corrected Computation of Molecular Energies

We present the first demonstration of an end-to-end pipeline with quantum error correction (QEC) for a quantum computation of the electronic structure of molecular systems. We calculate the ground-state energy of molecular hydrogen, using quantum phase estimation (QPE) on qubits encoded with the $[[7,1,3]]$ color code on Quantinuum H2-2. We obtain improvements in computational fidelity by (1) introducing several partially fault-tolerant (FT) techniques for the Clifford+$R_{Z}$ (arbitrary-angle single-qubit rotation) gate set, and (2) integrating Steane QEC gadgets for real-time error correction. In particular, the latter enhances the QPE circuits' performance despite the complexity of the extra QEC circuitry. The encoded circuits contain up to 1585 (546) fixed and 7202 (1702) conditional physical two-qubit gates (mid-circuit measurements), and $\sim$3900 ($\sim$760) total operations are applied on average. The energy $E$ is experimentally estimated to within $E - E_{\mathrm{FCI}} = 0.001(13)$ hartree, where $E_{\mathrm{FCI}}$ denotes the exact ground state energy within the given basis set. Additionally, we conduct numerical simulations with tunable noise parameters to identify the dominant sources of noise. We find that orienting the QEC protocols towards higher memory noise protection is the most promising avenue to improve our experimental results.

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arXiv2025

Certified randomness using a trapped-ion quantum processor

While quantum computers have the potential to perform a wide range of practically important tasks beyond the capabilities of classical computers, realizing this potential remains a challenge. One such task is to use an untrusted remote device to generate random bits that can be certified to contain a certain amount of entropy. Certified randomness has many applications but is fundamentally impossible to achieve solely by classical computation. In this work, we demonstrate the generation of certifiably random bits using the 56-qubit Quantinuum H2-1 trapped-ion quantum computer accessed over the internet. Our protocol leverages the classical hardness of recent random circuit sampling demonstrations: a client generates quantum "challenge" circuits using a small randomness seed, sends them to an untrusted quantum server to execute, and verifies the server's results. We analyze the security of our protocol against a restricted class of realistic near-term adversaries. Using classical verification with measured combined sustained performance of $1.1\times10^{18}$ floating-point operations per second across multiple supercomputers, we certify $71,313$ bits of entropy under this restricted adversary and additional assumptions. Our results demonstrate a step towards the practical applicability of today's quantum computers.

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arXiv2025

Digital quantum magnetism on a trapped-ion quantum computer

Digital quantum matter -- realized when discrete quantum gates approximate continuous time evolution -- is susceptible to heating into chaotic, structureless states. If digitization errors are adequately suppressed, a long-lived transient regime of approximately energy-conserving dynamics can be observed on gate-based quantum computers. Conservation of energy, in turn, enables the exploration of a wide variety of complex behaviors observed in equilibrium systems, ranging from the nontrivial microscopic origins of thermalization itself to the stabilization of effective models hosting exotic emergent properties. Here, we use Quantinuum's system model H2 quantum computer to simulate digitized dynamics of the quantum Ising model, suppressing digitization errors well enough to observe thermalization on timescales that severely challenge classical simulation methods. Relaxation of an inhomogeneous state reveals an emergent hydrodynamics due to approximate energy conservation, and we compute the associated diffusion constant. By reprogramming our simulations to take place on a triangular lattice with periodic boundary conditions, we observe thermalization consistent with emergent gauge and topological constraints resulting from lattice frustration. Our results were enabled by continued advances in two-qubit gate quality (native partial entangler fidelities of $99.94(1)\%$), and establish digital quantum computers as powerful tools for studying (effectively) continuous-time dynamics.

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arXiv2024

Qutrit Toric Code and Parafermions in Trapped Ions

The development of programmable quantum devices can be measured by the complexity of manybody states that they are able to prepare. Among the most significant are topologically ordered states of matter, which enable robust quantum information storage and processing. While topological orders are more readily accessible with qudits, experimental realisations have thus far been limited to lattice models of qubits. Here, we prepare a ground state of the Z3 toric code state on 24 qutrits in a trapped ion quantum processor with fidelity per qutrit exceeding 96.5(3)%. We manipulate two types of defects which go beyond the conventional qubit toric code: a parafermion, and its bound state which is related to charge conjugation symmetry. We further demonstrate defect fusion and the transfer of entanglement between anyons and defects, which we use to control topological qutrits. Our work opens up the space of long-range entangled states with qudit degrees of freedom for use in quantum simulation and universal error-correcting codes.

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arXiv2024

Experimental Demonstration of Break-Even for the Compact Fermionic Encoding

The utility of solving the Fermi-Hubbard model has been estimated in the billions of dollars. Digital quantum computers can in principle address this task, but have so far been limited to quasi one-dimensional models. This is because of exponential overheads caused by the interplay of noise and the non-locality of the mapping between fermions and qubits. Here, we show experimentally that a recently developed local encoding can overcome this problem. We develop a new compilation scheme, called "corner hopping", that reduces the cost of simulating fermionic hopping by 42% which allows us to conduct the largest digital quantum simulations of a fermionic model to date, using a trapped ion quantum computer to prepare adiabatically the ground state of a 6 x 6 spinless Fermi-Hubbard model encoded in 48 physical qubits. We also develop two new error mitigation schemes for systems with conserved quantities, one based on local postselection and one on extrapolation of local observables. Our results suggest that Fermi-Hubbard models beyond classical simulability can be addressed by digital quantum computers without large increases in gate fidelity.

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arXiv2024

Demonstration of quantum computation and error correction with a tesseract code

A critical milestone for quantum computers is to demonstrate fault-tolerant computation that outperforms computation on physical qubits. The tesseract subsystem color code protects four logical qubits in 16 physical qubits, to distance four. Using the tesseract code on Quantinuum's trapped-ion quantum computers, we prepare high-fidelity encoded graph states on up to 12 logical qubits, beneficially combining for the first time fault-tolerant error correction and computation. We also protect encoded states through up to five rounds of error correction. Using performant quantum software and hardware together allows moderate-depth logical quantum circuits to have an order of magnitude less error than the equivalent unencoded circuits.

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arXiv2024

Experiments with the 4D Surface Code on a QCCD Quantum Computer

Single-shot quantum error correction has the potential to speed up quantum computations by removing the need for multiple rounds of syndrome extraction in order to be fault-tolerant. Using Quantinuum's H2 trapped-ion quantum computer, we implement the [[33,1,4]] 4D surface code and perform the first experimental demonstration of single-shot quantum error correction with bare ancilla qubits. We conduct memory experiments comparing the 2D and 4D surface codes and find that despite differences in qubit use and syndrome extraction circuit depth, the 4D surface code matches or outperforms the 2D surface code in both the fault-tolerant and single-shot regimes.

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arXiv2024

The computational power of random quantum circuits in arbitrary geometries

Empirical evidence for a gap between the computational powers of classical and quantum computers has been provided by experiments that sample the output distributions of two-dimensional quantum circuits. Many attempts to close this gap have utilized classical simulations based on tensor network techniques, and their limitations shed light on the improvements to quantum hardware required to frustrate classical simulability. In particular, quantum computers having in excess of $\sim 50$ qubits are primarily vulnerable to classical simulation due to restrictions on their gate fidelity and their connectivity, the latter determining how many gates are required (and therefore how much infidelity is suffered) in generating highly-entangled states. Here, we describe recent hardware upgrades to Quantinuum's H2 quantum computer enabling it to operate on up to $56$ qubits with arbitrary connectivity and $99.843(5)\%$ two-qubit gate fidelity. Utilizing the flexible connectivity of H2, we present data from random circuit sampling in highly connected geometries, doing so at unprecedented fidelities and a scale that appears to be beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art classical algorithms. The considerable difficulty of classically simulating H2 is likely limited only by qubit number, demonstrating the promise and scalability of the QCCD architecture as continued progress is made towards building larger machines.

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arXiv2024

Benchmarking logical three-qubit quantum Fourier transform encoded in the Steane code on a trapped-ion quantum computer

We implement logically encoded three-qubit circuits for the quantum Fourier transform (QFT), using the [[7,1,3]] Steane code, and benchmark the circuits on the Quantinuum H2-1 trapped-ion quantum computer. The circuits require multiple logical two-qubit gates, which are implemented transversally, as well as logical non-Clifford single-qubit rotations, which are performed by non-fault-tolerant state preparation followed by a teleportation gadget. First, we benchmark individual logical components using randomized benchmarking for the logical two-qubit gate, and a Ramsey-type experiment for the logical $T$ gate. We then implement the full QFT circuit, using two different methods for performing a logical control-$T$, and benchmark the circuits by applying it to each basis state in a set of bases that is sufficient to lower bound the process fidelity. We compare the logical QFT benchmark results to predictions based on the logical component benchmarks.

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arXiv2023

Measuring the Loschmidt amplitude for finite-energy properties of the Fermi-Hubbard model on an ion-trap quantum computer

Calculating the equilibrium properties of condensed matter systems is one of the promising applications of near-term quantum computing. Recently, hybrid quantum-classical time-series algorithms have been proposed to efficiently extract these properties from a measurement of the Loschmidt amplitude $\langle \psi| e^{-i \hat H t}|\psi \rangle$ from initial states $|\psi\rangle$ and a time evolution under the Hamiltonian $\hat H$ up to short times $t$. In this work, we study the operation of this algorithm on a present-day quantum computer. Specifically, we measure the Loschmidt amplitude for the Fermi-Hubbard model on a $16$-site ladder geometry (32 orbitals) on the Quantinuum H2-1 trapped-ion device. We assess the effect of noise on the Loschmidt amplitude and implement algorithm-specific error mitigation techniques. By using a thus-motivated error model, we numerically analyze the influence of noise on the full operation of the quantum-classical algorithm by measuring expectation values of local observables at finite energies. Finally, we estimate the resources needed for scaling up the algorithm.

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arXiv2023

Evidence of Scaling Advantage for the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm on a Classically Intractable Problem

The quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is a leading candidate algorithm for solving optimization problems on quantum computers. However, the potential of QAOA to tackle classically intractable problems remains unclear. Here, we perform an extensive numerical investigation of QAOA on the low autocorrelation binary sequences (LABS) problem, which is classically intractable even for moderately sized instances. We perform noiseless simulations with up to 40 qubits and observe that the runtime of QAOA with fixed parameters scales better than branch-and-bound solvers, which are the state-of-the-art exact solvers for LABS. The combination of QAOA with quantum minimum finding gives the best empirical scaling of any algorithm for the LABS problem. We demonstrate experimental progress in executing QAOA for the LABS problem using an algorithm-specific error detection scheme on Quantinuum trapped-ion processors. Our results provide evidence for the utility of QAOA as an algorithmic component that enables quantum speedups.

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arXiv2023

Non-Abelian Topological Order and Anyons on a Trapped-Ion Processor

Non-Abelian topological order (TO) is a coveted state of matter with remarkable properties, including quasiparticles that can remember the sequence in which they are exchanged. These anyonic excitations are promising building blocks of fault-tolerant quantum computers. However, despite extensive efforts, non-Abelian TO and its excitations have remained elusive, unlike the simpler quasiparticles or defects in Abelian TO. In this work, we present the first unambiguous realization of non-Abelian TO and demonstrate control of its anyons. Using an adaptive circuit on Quantinuum's H2 trapped-ion quantum processor, we create the ground state wavefunction of $D_4$ TO on a kagome lattice of 27 qubits, with fidelity per site exceeding $98.4\%$. By creating and moving anyons along Borromean rings in spacetime, anyon interferometry detects an intrinsically non-Abelian braiding process. Furthermore, tunneling non-Abelions around a torus creates all 22 ground states, as well as an excited state with a single anyon -- a peculiar feature of non-Abelian TO. This work illustrates the counterintuitive nature of non-Abelions and enables their study in quantum devices.

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