In this paper we numerically investigate the fault-tolerant threshold for optical cluster-state quantum computing. We allow both photon loss noise and depolarizing noise (as a general proxy for all local noise), and obtain a threshold region of allowed pairs of values for the two types of noise. Roughly speaking, our results show that scalable optical quantum computing is possible for photon loss probabilities less than 0.003, and for depolarization probabilities less than 0.0001.
Fault-tolerant quantum computing based on surface codes has emerged as a popular route to large-scale quantum computers capable of accurate computation even in the presence of noise. Its popularity is, in part, because the fault-tolerance or accuracy threshold for surface codes is believed to be less stringent than competing schemes. This threshold is the noise level below which computational accuracy can be increased by increasing physical resources for noise removal, and is an important engineering target for realising quantum devices. The current conclusions about surface code thresholds ar…
A significant problem for current quantum computers is noise. While there are many distinct noise channels, the depolarizing noise model often appropriately describes average noise for large circuits involving many qubits and gates. We present a method to mitigate the depolarizing noise by first estimating its rate with a noise-estimation circuit and then correcting the output of the target circuit using the estimated rate. The method is experimentally validated on the simulation of the Heisenberg model. We find that our approach in combination with readout-error correction, randomized compili…
We examine a stochastic noise process that has a decohering effect on the average evolution of qubits in the quantum register of the solid state quantum computer proposed by Kane. We consider the effects of this process on the single qubit operations necessary to perform quantum logical gates and derive an expression for the fidelity of these gates in this system. We then calculate an upper bound on the level of this stochastic noise tolerable in a workable quantum computer.
We show how to obtain concrete constructions of homological quantum codes based on tilings of 2D surfaces with constant negative curvature (hyperbolic surfaces). This construction results in two-dimensional quantum codes whose tradeoff of encoding rate versus protection is more favorable than for the surface code. These surface codes would require variable length connections between qubits, as determined by the hyperbolic geometry. We provide numerical estimates of the value of the noise threshold and logical error probability of these codes against independent X or Z noise, assuming noise-fre…
Fault-tolerant quantum computing in systems composed of both Majorana fermions and topologically unprotected quantum systems, e.g. superconducting circuits or quantum dots, is studied in this paper. Errors caused by topologically unprotected quantum systems need to be corrected with error correction schemes, for instance, the surface code. We find that the error-correction performance of such a hybrid topological quantum computer is not superior to a normal quantum computer unless the topological charge of Majorana fermions is insusceptible to noise. If errors changing the topological charge a…
We consider the effects of gate noise on the operation of an entanglement purification protocol. We characterize the performance of the protocol by two measures, the minimum purifiable input state fidelity, and the maximum output state fidelity. Both these measures are a function of gate error rate. For sufficiently large gate error rate these two measures converge, defining a threshold on gate error rates. Numerically, we estimate this threshold to be $9.2\times 10^{-2}$, which is achievable with many present day experimental architectures. (This paper is written in an experimental rapid comm…
In this paper we consider adversarial noise models that will fail quantum error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computation. We describe known results regarding high-rate noise, sequential computation, and reversible noisy computation. We continue by discussing highly correlated noise and the "boundary," in terms of correlation of errors, of the "threshold theorem." Next, we draw a picture of adversarial forms of noise called (collectively) "detrimental noise." Detrimental noise is modeled after familiar properties of noise propagation. However, it can have various causes. We start by po…
In this paper we do a detailed numerical investigation of the fault-tolerant threshold for optical cluster-state quantum computation. Our noise model allows both photon loss and depolarizing noise, as a general proxy for all types of local noise other than photon loss noise. We obtain a threshold region of allowed pairs of values for the two types of noise. Roughly speaking, our results show that scalable optical quantum computing is possible for photon loss probabilities less than 0.003, and for depolarization probabilities less than 0.0001. Our fault-tolerant protocol involves a number of in…
The highest current estimates for the amount of noise a quantum computer can tolerate are based on fault-tolerance schemes relying heavily on postselecting on no detected errors. However, there has been no proof that these schemes give even a positive tolerable noise threshold. A technique to prove a positive threshold, for probabilistic noise models, is presented. The main idea is to maintain strong control over the distribution of errors in the quantum state at all times. This distribution has correlations which conceivably could grow out of control with postselection. But in fact, the error…
Benchmarking is how the performance of a computing system is determined. Surprisingly, even for classical computers this is not a straightforward process. One must choose the appropriate benchmark and metrics to extract meaningful results. Different benchmarks test the system in different ways and each individual metric may or may not be of interest. Choosing the appropriate approach is tricky. The situation is even more open ended for quantum computers, where there is a wider range of hardware, fewer established guidelines, and additional complicating factors. Notably, quantum noise significa…
We study how much noise can be tolerated by a universal gate set before it loses its quantum-computational power. Specifically we look at circuits with perfect stabilizer operations in addition to imperfect non-stabilizer gates. We prove that for all unitary single-qubit gates there exists a tight depolarizing noise threshold that determines whether the gate enables universal quantum computation or if the gate can be simulated by a mixture of Clifford gates. This exact threshold is determined by the Clifford polytope spanned by the 24 single-qubit Clifford gates. The result is in contrast to t…
Quantum error correction is instrumental in protecting quantum systems from noise in quantum computing and communication settings. Pauli channels can be efficiently simulated and threshold values for Pauli error rates under a variety of error-correcting codes have been obtained. However, realistic quantum systems can undergo noise processes that differ significantly from Pauli noise. In this paper, we present an efficient hard decoding algorithm for optimizing thresholds and lowering failure rates of an error-correcting code under general completely positive and trace-preserving (i.e., Markovi…
Demonstrating quantum supremacy, a complexity-guaranteed quantum advantage against over the best classical algorithms by using less universal quantum devices, is an important near-term milestone for quantum information processing. Here we develop a threshold theorem for quantum supremacy with noisy quantum circuits in the pre-threshold region, where quantum error correction does not work directly. We show that, even in such a region, we can virtually simulate quantum error correction by postselection. This allows us to show that the output sampled from the noisy quantum circuits (without posts…
We show that the noise threshold for optical quantum computing can be significantly improved by using the EPR-type of photon source. In this implementation, the detector efficiency $η_{d}$ is required to be larger than 50%, and the source efficiency $η_{s}$ can be an arbitrarily small positive number. This threshold compares favorably with the implementation using the single-photon source, where one requires the combined efficiency $η_{d}η_{s}>2/3$. We discuss several physical setups for realization of the required EPR photon source, including the photon emitter from a single-atom cavity.
Noise dominates every aspect of near-term quantum computers, rendering it exceedingly difficult to carry out even small computations. In this paper we are concerned with the modelling of noise in Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. We focus on three error groups that represent the main sources of noise during a computation and present quantum channels that model each source. We engineer a noise model that combines all three noise channels and simulates the evolution of the quantum computer using its calibrated error rates. We run various experiments of our model, showcasing its …
Variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) is promising to show quantum advantage on near-term noisy-intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers. One central problem of VQE is the effect of noise, especially the physical noise on realistic quantum computers. We study systematically the effect of noise for the VQE algorithm, by performing numerical simulations with various local noise models, including the amplitude damping, dephasing, and depolarizing noise. We show that the ground state energy will deviate from the exact value as the noise probability increase and normally noise will accumulate as…
We consider an approach to fault tolerant quantum computing based on a simple error detecting code operating as the substrate for a conventional surface code. We develop a customised decoder to process the information about the likely location of errors, obtained from the error detect stage, with an advanced variant of the minimum weight perfect matching algorithm. A threshold gate-level error rate of 1.42% is found for the concatenated code given highly asymmetric noise. This is superior to the standard surface code and remains so as we introduce a significant component of depolarising noise;…
In order to realize fault-tolerant quantum computation, tight evaluation of error threshold under practical noise models is essential. While non-Clifford noise is ubiquitous in experiments, the error threshold under non-Clifford noise cannot be efficiently treated with known approaches. We construct an efficient scheme for estimating the error threshold of one-dimensional quantum repetition code under non-Clifford noise. To this end, we employ non-unitary free-fermionic formalism for efficient simulation of the one-dimensional repetition code under coherent noise. This allows us to evaluate th…
Fault-tolerant cluster states form the basis for scalable measurement-based quantum computation. Recently, new stabilizer codes for scalable circuit-based quantum computation have been introduced that have very high thresholds under biased noise where the qubit predominantly suffers from one type of error, e.g. dephasing. However, extending these advances in stabilizer codes to generate high-threshold cluster states for biased noise has been a challenge, as the standard method for foliating stabilizer codes to generate fault-tolerant cluster states does not preserve the noise bias. In this wor…
We consider a model of quantum computation in which the set of operations is limited to nearest-neighbor interactions on a 2D lattice. We model movement of qubits with noisy SWAP operations. For this architecture we design a fault-tolerant coding scheme using the concatenated [[7,1,3]] Steane code. Our scheme is potentially applicable to ion-trap and solid-state quantum technologies. We calculate a lower bound on the noise threshold for our local model using a detailed failure probability analysis. We obtain a threshold of 1.85 x 10^-5 for the local setting, where memory error rates are one-te…
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 h…
We consider the possibility of adding noise to a quantum circuit to make it efficiently simulatable classically. In previous works this approach has been used to derive upper bounds to fault tolerance thresholds - usually by identifying a privileged resource, such as an entangling gate or a non-Clifford operation, and then deriving the noise levels required to make it `unprivileged'. In this work we consider extensions of this approach where noise is added to Clifford gates too, and then `commuted' around until it concentrates on attacking the non-Clifford resource. While commuting noise aroun…
Quantum circuits implementing fault-tolerant quantum error correction (QEC) for the three qubit bit-flip code and five-qubit code are studied. To describe the effect of noise, we apply a model based on a generalized effective Hamiltonian where the system-environment interactions are taken into account by including stochastic fluctuating terms in the system Hamiltonian. This noise model enables us to investigate the effect of noise in quantum circuits under realistic device conditions and avoid strong assumptions such as maximal parallelism and weak storage errors. Noise thresholds of the QEC c…
We investigate measurement-based entanglement purification protocols (EPP) in the presence of local noise and imperfections. We derive a universal, protocol-independent threshold for the required quality of the local resource states, where we show that local noise per particle of up to 24% is tolerable. This corresponds to an increase of the noise threshold by almost an order of magnitude, based on the joint measurement-based implementation of sequential rounds of few-particle EPP. We generalize our results to multipartite EPP, where we encounter similarly high error thresholds.
We analyze the properties of a 2D topological code derived by concatenating the [[4, 2, 2]] code with the toric/surface code, or alternatively by removing check operators from the 2D square-octagon or 4.8.8 color code. We show that the resulting code has a circuit-based noise threshold of $\sim 0.41\%$ (compared to $\sim 0.6\%$ for the toric code in a similar scenario), which is higher than any known 2D color code. We believe that the construction may be of interest for hardware in which one wants to use both long-range two-qubit gates as well as short-range gates between small clusters of qub…
How much noise can a given quantum state tolerate without losing its entanglement? For qudits of arbitrary dimension, I investigate this question for two noise models: Global white noise, where a depolarizing channel is applied to all qudits simultaneously, and local white noise, where a single qudit depolarizing channel is applied to every qudit individually. Using a unitary generalization of the Pauli group, I derive noise thresholds for stabilizer states, with an emphasis on graph states, and compare different entanglement criteria. The PPT and reduction criteria generally provide high nois…
Boson sampling, a computational problem conjectured to be hard to simulate on a classical machine, is a promising candidate for an experimental demonstration of quantum advantage using bosons. However, inevitable experimental noise and imperfections, such as loss in the interferometer and random counts at the detectors, could challenge the sampling task from entering the regime where quantum advantage is achievable. In this work we introduce higher order non-linearities as a mean to enhance the computational complexity of the problem and the protocol's robustness against noise, i.e. increase t…
In fault-tolerant quantum computing schemes, the overhead is often dominated by the cost of preparing codewords reliably. This cost generally increases quadratically with the block size of the underlying quantum error-correcting code. In consequence, large codes that are otherwise very efficient have found limited fault-tolerance applications. Fault-tolerant preparation circuits therefore are an important target for optimization. We study the Golay code, a 23-qubit quantum error-correcting code that protects the logical qubit to a distance of seven. In simulations, even using a naive ancilla p…
The quantum error threshold is the highest (model-dependent) noise rate which we can tolerate and still quantum-compute to arbitrary accuracy. Although noise thresholds are frequently estimated for the Steane seven-qubit, distance-three quantum code, there has been no proof that a constant threshold even exists for distance-three codes. We prove the existence of a constant threshold. The proven threshold is well below estimates, based on simulations and analytic models, of the true threshold, but at least it is now known to be positive.
Fault tolerant quantum error correction (QEC) networks are studied by a combination of numerical and approximate analytical treatments. The probability of failure of the recovery operation is calculated for a variety of CSS codes, including large block codes and concatenated codes. Recent insights into the syndrome extraction process, which render the whole process more efficient and more noise-tolerant, are incorporated. The average number of recoveries which can be completed without failure is thus estimated as a function of various parameters. The main parameters are the gate (gamma) and me…
Topological subsystem codes proposed recently by Bombin are quantum error correcting codes defined on a two-dimensional grid of qubits that permit reliable quantum information storage with a constant error threshold. These codes require only the measurement of two-qubit nearest-neighbor operators for error correction. In this paper we demonstrate that topological subsystem codes (TSCs) can be viewed as generalizations of Kitaev's honeycomb model to trivalent hypergraphs. This new connection provides a systematic way of constructing TSCs and analyzing their properties. We also derive a necessar…
A universal fault-tolerant quantum computer holds the promise to speed up computational problems that are otherwise intractable on classical computers; however, for the next decade or so, our access is restricted to noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers and, perhaps, early fault tolerant (EFT) quantum computers. This motivates the development of many near-term quantum algorithms including robust amplitude estimation (RAE), which is a quantum-enhanced algorithm for estimating expectation values. One obstacle to using RAE has been a paucity of ways of getting realistic error models i…
Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are intractable to classical computers, nevertheless they have high error rates. One significant kind of errors is known as Readout Errors. Current methods, as the matrix inversion and least-squares, are used to unfold (correct) readout errors. But these methods present many problems like oscillatory behavior and unphysical outcomes. In 2020 Benjamin Nachman et al. suggested a technique currently used in HEP, to correct detector effects. This method is known as the Iterative Bayesian Unfolding (IBU), and they have proven its effective…
In order to understand the capabilities and limitations of quantum computers, it is necessary to develop methods that efficiently characterize and benchmark error channels present on these devices. In this paper, we present a method that faithfully reconstructs a marginal (local) approximation of the effective noise (MATEN) channel, that acts as a single layer at the end of the circuit. We first introduce a dual map framework that allows us to analytically derive expectation values of observables with respect to noisy circuits. These findings are supported by numerical simulations of the quant…
To make arbitrarily accurate quantum computation possible, practical realization of quantum computers will require suppressing noise in quantum memory and gate operations to make it below a threshold value. A scheme based on realistic quantum computer models is described for suppressing noise in quantum computation without the cost of stringent quantum computing resources.
The study of the effect of quantum noise on the accuracy of modeling quantum systems on a quantum computer using the Zalka-Wiesner method is carried out. The efficiency of the developed methods and algorithms is demonstrated by the example of solving the nonstationary Schrodinger equation with allowance for quantum noise for a particle moving in the Poschl-Teller potential. The analysis and prediction of accuracy for the Zalka-Wiesner method are carried out taking into account the complexity of the quantum system and the strength of quantum noise. In our opinion, the considered problem provide…
The surface code is a many-body quantum system, and simulating it in generic conditions is computationally hard. While the surface code is believed to have a high threshold, the numerical simulations used to establish this threshold are based on simplified noise models. We present a tensor-network algorithm for simulating error correction with the surface code under arbitrary local noise. We use this algorithm to study the threshold and the subthreshold behavior of the amplitude-damping and systematic rotation channels. We also compare these results to those obtained by making standard approxi…
Color code thresholds under circuit-level noise beyond the Pauli framework
INFN, Sezione di Padova（意大利国家核物理研究所帕多瓦分部）；Institute for Complex Quantum Systems, Ulm University（乌尔姆大学复杂量子系统研究所）；Padua Quantum Technologies Research Center, Università degli Studi di Padova（帕多瓦大学帕多瓦量子技术中心）
We investigate the effect of stochastic control errors in the time-dependent Hamiltonian on isolated quantum dynamics. The control errors are formulated as time-dependent stochastic noise in the Schrodinger equation. For a class of stochastic control errors, we establish a threshold theorem that provides a sufficient condition to obtain the target state, which should be determined in noiseless isolated quantum dynamics, as a relation between the number of measurements and noise strength. The theorem guarantees that if the sum of the noise strengths is less than the inverse of computational tim…
Surface code is an error-correcting method that can be applied to the implementation of a usable quantum computer. At present, a promising candidate for a usable quantum computer is based on superconductor-specifically transmon. Because errors in transmon-based quantum computers appear biasedly as Z type errors, tailored surface and XZZX codes have been developed to deal with the type errors. Even though these surface codes have been suggested for lattice structures, since transmons-based quantum computers, developed by IBM, have a heavy-hexagon structure, it is natural to ask how tailored sur…
This work is concerned with phrasing the concepts of fault-tolerant quantum computation within the framework of disordered systems, Bernoulli site percolation in particular. We show how the so-called "threshold theorems" on the possibility of fault-tolerant quantum computation with constant error rate can be cast as a renormalization (coarse-graining) of the site percolation process describing the occurrence of errors during computation. We also use percolation techniques to derive a trade-off between the complexity overhead of the fault-tolerant circuit and the threshold error rate.
Designing a Machine Learning-Driven, Cross-Hardware Emulator for Noisy Quantum Computers with Gate-Based Protocols
Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)（高性能计算研究所，科学技术研究局）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学物理系）；INFN, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所，米兰分部）；Theoretical Physics Department, CERN（欧洲核子研究中心理论物理部）；Quantum Research Center, Technology Innovation Institute（技术创新研究所量子研究中心）
The goal of this paper is to review the theoretical basis for achieving a faithful quantum information transmission and processing in the presence of noise. Initially encoding and decoding, implementing gates and quantum error correction will be considered error free. Finally we will relax this non realistic assumption, introducing the quantum fault-tolerant concept. The existence of an error threshold permits to conclude that there is no physical law preventing a quantum computer from being built. An error model based on the depolarizing channel will be able to provide a simple estimation of …
The most common error models for quantum computers assume the independence of errors on different qubits. However, most noise mechanisms have some correlations in space. We show how to improve quantum information processing for few-qubit systems when spatial correlations are present. This starts with strategies to measure the correlations. Once the correlations have been determined, we can give criteria to assess the suitability of candidate quantum circuits to carry out a given task. This is achieved by defining measures of decoherence that are local in Hilbert space, identifying "good" and "…
In this paper we calculate upper bounds on fault tolerance, without restrictions on the overhead involved. Optimally adaptive recovery operators are used, and the Shannon entropy is used to estimate the thresholds. By allowing for unrealistically high levels of overhead, we find a quantum fault tolerant threshold of 6.88% for the depolarizing noise used by Knill, which compares well to "above 3%" evidenced by Knill. We conjecture that the optimal threshold is 6.90%, based upon the hashing rate. We also perform threshold calculations for types of noise other than that discussed by Knill.
As far as we know, a useful quantum computer will require fault-tolerant gates, and existing schemes demand a prohibitively large space and time overhead. We argue that a first generation quantum computer will be very valuable to design, test, and optimize fault-tolerant protocols tailored to the noise processes of the hardware. Our argument is essentially a critical analysis of the current methods envisioned to optimize fault-tolerant schemes, which rely on hardware characterization, noise modelling, and numerical simulations. We show that, even within a very restricted set of noise models, e…
