Estimates of the quantum accuracy threshold often tacitly assume that it is possible to interact arbitrary pairs of qubits in a quantum computer with a failure rate that is independent of the distance between them. None of the many physical systems that are candidates for quantum computing possess this property. Here we study the performance of a concatenated error-detection code in a system that permits only nearest-neighbor interactions in one dimension. We make use of a message-passing scheme that maximizes the number of errors that can be reliably corrected by the code. Our numerical results indicate that arbitrarily accurate universal quantum computation is possible if the probability of failure of each elementary physical operation is below approximately ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}5}$. This threshold is three orders of magnitude lower than the highest known.
Estimates of the quantum accuracy threshold often tacitly assume that it is possible to interact arbitrary pairs of qubits in a quantum computer with a failure rate that is independent of the distance between them. None of the many physical systems that are candidates for quantum computing possess this property. Here we study the performance of a concatenated error-detection code in a system that permits only nearest-neighbor interactions in one dimension. We make use of a message-passing scheme that maximizes the number of errors that can be reliably corrected by the code. Our numerical results indicate that arbitrarily accurate universal quantum computation is possible if the probability of failure of each elementary physical operation is below approximately 10\ensuremath−5. This threshold is three orders of magnitude lower than the highest known.
It has been known that error-correction via concatenated codes can be done with exponentially small failure rate if the error rate for physical qubits is below a certain accuracy threshold (probably ∼ 10 −3 –10 −6). Other, un-concatenated codes with their own attractive features—e.g., an accuracy threshold ∼ 10 −2 —have also been studied. A method to obtain universal computation is presented here which does not rely on any concatenated structure within the code itself, but instead emulates this structure with logical qubits in order to construct an encoded Toffoli gate. This realizes ∼ 10 −2 as a threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computation. 1 QEC codes and universal computation In the “space ” of all possible quantum error-correcting codes, much recent work has focused on a relatively small class, namely concatenated codes [1]–[7]. The basic idea behind these is to improve the results of a given few-qubit code by
It is known that quantum error correction via concatenated codes can be done with exponentially small failure rate if the error rate for physical qubits is below a certain accuracy threshold. Other, unconcatenated codes with their own attractive features such as improved accuracy threshold, local operations, have also been studied. By iteratively distilling a certain two-qubit entangled state it is shown how to perform an encoded Toffoli gate, important for universal computation, on codes whose C-NOT operation is bitwise. For certain codes, over a very large range of block sizes, this technique requires at most one concatenation.
Quantum error correction and fault tolerance make it possible to perform quantum computations in the presence of imprecision and imperfections of realistic devices. An important question is to find the noise rate at which errors can be arbitrarily suppressed. By concatenating the 7-qubit Steane and 15-qubit Reed-Muller codes, the 105-qubit code enables a universal set of fault-tolerant gates despite not all of them being transversal. Importantly, the cnot gate remains transversal in both codes, and as such has increased error protection relative to the other single qubit logical gates. We show that while the level-1 pseudothreshold for the concatenated scheme is limited by the logical Hadamard gate, the error suppression of the logical cnot gates allows for the asymptotic threshold to increase by orders of magnitude at higher levels. We establish a lower bound of 1.28×10^{-3} for the asymptotic threshold of this code, which is competitive with known concatenated models and does not rely on ancillary magic state preparation for universal computation.
The field of quantum computation currently lacks a formal proof of experimental feasibility. Qubits are fragile and sophisticated quantum error correction is required to achieve reliable quantum computation. The surface code is a promising quantum error correction code, requiring only a physically reasonable 2D lattice of qubits with nearest neighbor interactions. However, existing proofs that reliable quantum computation is possible using this code assume the ability to measure four-body operators and, despite making this difficult to realize assumption, require that the error rate of these operator measurements is less than 10(-9), an unphysically low target. High error rates have been proved tolerable only when assuming tunable interactions of strength and error rate independent of distance, which is also unphysical. In this work, given a 2D lattice of qubits with only nearest neighbor two-qubit gates, and single-qubit measurement, initialization, and unitary gates, all of which have error rate p, we prove that arbitrarily reliable quantum computation is possible provided p < 7.4 × 10(-4), a target that many experiments have already achieved. This closes a long-standing open problem, formally proving the experimental feasibility of quantum computation under physically reasonable assumptions.
Assuming an array that consists of two parallel lines of qubits and that permits only nearest neighbor interactions, we construct physical and logical circuitry to enable universal fault tolerant quantum computation under the [[7,1,3]] quantum code. A rigorous lower bound to the fault tolerant threshold for this array is determined in a number of physical settings. Adversarial memory errors, two-qubit gate errors and readout errors are included in our analysis. In the setting where the physical memory failure rate is equal to one-tenth of the physical gate error rate, the physical readout error rate is equal to the physical gate error rate, and the duration of physical readout is ten times the duration of a physical gate, we obtain a lower bound to the asymptotic threshold of 1.96×10−6.
A quantum computer can only solve classically intractable problems like factoring large integers if it can perform quantum computations scalably. The minimum accuracy required among the components of a quantum computer to perform scalable computation is called the quantum accuracy threshold, epsilon 0. We explore the accuracy threshold for Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes of distance 5. Our accuracy thresholds are based on the threshold theorem proven by Aliferis et al. [3]. Their threshold theorem is applicable to concatenated codes and can be used to derive a rigorous lower bound on the threshold. In this thesis we consider degenerate codes with parameters [[17,1,5]] and [[19,1,5]], and a non-degenerate [[21,1,5]] code. For each code we design a set of logical operations sufficient to perform universal computation. We estimate the thresholds using simulation tools for an independent stochastic error model. Our simulations incorporate randomized sampling techniques to estimate the number of ways our largest logical operation can fail. A lower bound of epsilon0 ≥ 3.624 x 10-5 is derived for the [[17,1,5]] code.