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arXiv:1004.3247 · Physical Review A

Bound on quantum computation time: Quantum error correction in a critical environment

E. Novais, Eduardo R. Mucciolo, Harold U. Baranger

Published Aug 31, 2010• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We obtain an upper bound on the time available for quantum computation for a given quantum computer and decohering environment with quantum error correction implemented. First, we derive an explicit quantum evolution operator for the logical qubits and show that it has the same form as that for the physical qubits but with a reduced coupling strength to the environment. Using this evolution operator, we find the trace distance between the real and ideal states of the logical qubits in two cases. For a super-Ohmic bath, the trace distance saturates, while for Ohmic or sub-Ohmic baths, there is a finite time before the trace distance exceeds a value set by the user.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.82.020303

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arXiv:1402.3108•Physical Review A•Apr 30, 2014•22 citations
We obtain an upper bound on the time available for quantum computation for a given quantum computer and decohering environment with quantum error correction implemented. First, we derive an explicit quantum evolution operator for the logical qubits and show that it has the same form as that for the physical qubits but with a reduced coupling strength to the environment. Using this evolution operator, we find the trace distance between the real and ideal states of the logical qubits in two cases. For a super-Ohmic bath, the trace distance saturates, while for Ohmic or sub-Ohmic baths, there is a finite time before the trace distance exceeds a value set by the user.
One of the key problems in quantum information processing is to understand the physical limits to quantum computation. Several strategies have been proposed to attenuate errors caused by the interaction of the computer with its surrounding environment and quantum error correction (QEC) is likely the most versatile. A large effort has been devoted to proving that resilience can be achieved by concatenating QEC codes in logical structures. In our work we look into this question at a different angle: we provide an upper bound on the time available to computation given a certain computer, a QEC code, and a decohering environment. We consider a broad class of environments, including those where correlation effects can be induced by gapless modes. Our approach is based on a Hamiltonian formulation where we use coarse graining in time to derive an explicit quantum evolution operator for the logical qubits, taking into account the QEC code. We show that this evolution operator has the same form as that for the original physical qubits, except for a reduced coupling to the environment which can be evaluated systematically for a given geometry and QEC code structure. To quantify the effectiveness of QEC, we compute the trace distance between the real and ideal states of a logical qubit after an arbitrary number of QEC cycles. We derive expressions for the long-time trace distance for several for super-ohmic-, ohmic-, and sub-ohmic-like baths. Given a confidence threshold for the trace distance, we establish the maximum time available for computation in those three cases. This maximum time is controlled by an exponent related to the spatial dimensions and other characteristics of the computer and the environment. For the super-ohmic regime, we find that computation can continue indefinitely, while in the other regimes the maximum time depends strongly on the QEC code, on the number of logical qubits, and on the original environment-computer strength interaction.
Certain physical aspects of quantum error correction are discussed for a quantum computer (n-qubit register) in contact with a decohering environment. Under rather plausible assumptions upon the form of the computer-environment interaction, the efficiency of a general correcting procedure is evaluated as a function of the spontaneous-decay duration and the rank of errors covered by the procedure. It is proved that the probability of errors can be made arbitrarily small by enhancing the correction method, provided the decohering interaction is represented by a bounded operator.
We study dynamical decoupling in a multiqubit setting, where it is combined with quantum logic gates. This is illustrated in terms of computation using Heisenberg interactions only, where global decoupling pulses commute with the computation. We derive a rigorous error bound on the trace distance or fidelity between the desired computational state and the actual time-evolved state, for a system subject to coupling to a bounded-strength bath. The bound is expressed in terms of the operator norm of the effective Hamiltonian generating the evolution in the presence of decoupling and logic operations. We apply the bound to the case of periodic pulse sequences and find that in order to maintain a constant trace distance or fidelity, the number of cycles---at fixed pulse interval and width---should scale in inverse proportion to the square of the number of qubits. This sets a scalability limit on the protection of quantum computation using periodic dynamical decoupling.
Quantum error correction [1, 2, 3, 4] provides a path to reach practical quantum computing by combining multiple physical qubits into a logical qubit, where the logical error rate is suppressed exponentially as more qubits are added. However, this exponential suppression only occurs if the physical error rate is below a critical threshold. Here, we present two below-threshold surface code memories on our newest generation of superconducting processors, Willow: a distance-7 code, and a distance-5 code integrated with a real-time decoder. The logical error rate of our larger quantum memory is suppressed by a factor of Λ=2.14±0.02\varLambda \mathrm{=2.14}\pm 0.02Λ=2.14±0.02 when increasing the code distance by two, culminating in a 101-qubit distance-7 code with 0.143% ± 0.003% error per cycle of error correction. This logical memory is also beyond break-even, exceeding its best physical qubit’s lifetime by a factor of 2.4±0.32.4\pm 0.32.4±0.3 . Our system maintains below-threshold performance when decoding in real time, achieving an average decoder latency of 63 μs at distance-5 up to a million cycles, with a cycle time of 1.1 μs. We also run repetition codes up to distance-29 and find that logical performance is limited by rare correlated error events occurring approximately once every hour, or 333 ×\times × 109{10}^{9}109 cycles. Our results present device performance that, if scaled, could realize the operational requirements of large scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.
Understanding relaxation dynamics in open quantum systems is a central problem in nonequilibrium quantum physics. Here we investigate the quantum Mpemba effect in the spin boson model. In the weak coupling Markovian regime we show that the occurrence of the effect strongly depends on the choice of distance measure at low temperature: while it appears in the trace distance, it can disappear in the quantum relative entropy. Going beyond the weak-coupling approximation, numerically exact simulations of the full system bath dynamics reveal that increasing coupling enhances the effect in the trace distance and restores it in the quantum relative entropy. We uncover a simple Bloch sphere picture of the effect: within the excited-state hemisphere, pairs of states related by rotations and having the same Bloch-vector modulus generically exhibit an inversion of their relaxation ordering. This behavior is robust across sub Ohmic, Ohmic, and super Ohmic bath spectra. In the Ohmic and sub Ohmic regimes, the crossing time becomes strongly suppressed upon approaching the critical region, whereas in the super Ohmic regime the effect remains enhanced despite the absence of a finite-coupling localization transition. These results highlight the interplay between geometry, distance measures, system--environment coupling, and bath spectral properties in anomalous quantum relaxation.
We consider a surface code suffering decoherence due to coupling to a bath of bosonic modes at finite temperature and study the time available before the unavoidable breakdown of error correction occurs as a function of coupling and bath parameters. We derive an exact expression for the error rate on each individual qubit of the code, taking spatial and temporal correlations between the errors into account. We investigate numerically how different kinds of spatial correlations between errors in the surface code affect its threshold error rate. This allows us to derive the maximal duration of each quantum error-correction period by studying when the single-qubit error rate reaches the corresponding threshold. At the time when error correction breaks down, the error rate in the code can be dominated by the direct coupling of each qubit to the bath, by mediated subluminal interactions, or by mediated superluminal interactions. For a two-dimensional Ohmic bath, the time available per quantum error-correction period vanishes in the thermodynamic limit of a large code size LLL due to induced superluminal interactions, although it does so only like 1/lnL1/\sqrt{lnL}1/lnL​. For all other bath types considered, this time remains finite as $L\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$.