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arXiv:1709.06245 · Physical Review A

Fault-tolerant fermionic quantum computation based on color code

Ying Li

Published Jul 31, 2018• 18 citations
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Abstract

An important approach to fault-tolerant quantum computation is protecting logical information using quantum error correction. Usually, logical information is in the form of logical qubits, which are encoded in physical qubits using quantum error correction codes. Compared with qubit quantum computation, fermionic quantum computation has advantages in quantum simulations of fermionic systems, e.g., molecules. In this paper, we show that fermionic quantum computation can be universal and fault tolerant if we encode logical Majorana fermions in physical Majorana fermions. We take a color code as an example to demonstrate the universal set of fault-tolerant operations on logical Majorana fermions, and we numerically find that the fault-tolerance threshold is about $0.8%$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.012336

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An important approach to fault-tolerant quantum computation is protecting logical information using quantum error correction. Usually, logical information is in the form of logical qubits, which are encoded in physical qubits using quantum error correction codes. Compared with qubit quantum computation, fermionic quantum computation has advantages in quantum simulations of fermionic systems, e.g., molecules. In this paper, we show that fermionic quantum computation can be universal and fault tolerant if we encode logical Majorana fermions in physical Majorana fermions. We take a color code as an example to demonstrate the universal set of fault-tolerant operations on logical Majorana fermions, and we numerically find that the fault-tolerance threshold is about 0.80.8%0.8.
Simulating fermionic systems on qubit-based quantum computers often demands significant computational resources due to the requirement to map fermions to qubits. Thus, designing a fault-tolerant quantum computer that operates directly with fermions offers an effective solution to this challenge. Here, we introduce a protocol for fault-tolerant fermionic quantum computation utilizing fermion-to-fermion low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Our method employs a fermionic LDPC memory, which transfers its state to fermionic color code processors, where logical operations are subsequently performed. We propose using odd-weight logical Majorana operators to form the code space, serving as memory for the fermionic LDPC code, and provide an algorithm to identify these logical operators. We present examples showing that the encoding rate of fermionic codes often matches that of qubit codes, while the logical failure rate can be significantly lower than the physical error rate. Furthermore, we propose two methods for performing fermionic lattice surgery to facilitate state transfer. Finally, we simulate the dynamics of a fermionic system using our protocol, illustrating effective error suppression.
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 Letter. 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 are rare, the fault-tolerance threshold is much higher than the threshold of a normal quantum computer and a surface-code logical qubit could be encoded in only tens of topological qubits instead of about 1,000 normal qubits.
Quantum error correction is a crucial tool for mitigating hardware errors in quantum computers by encoding logical information into multiple physical qubits. However, no single error-correcting code allows for an intrinsically fault-tolerant implementation of all the gates needed for universal quantum computing [1-3]. One way to tackle this problem is to switch between two suitable error-correcting codes, while preserving the encoded logical information, which in combination give access to a fault-tolerant universal gate set [4-6]. In this work, we present the first experimental implementation of fault-tolerant code switching between two codes. One is the seven-qubit color code [7], which features fault-tolerant CNOT and HHH quantum gates, while the other one, the 10-qubit code [8], allows for a fault-tolerant TTT-gate implementation. Together they form a complementary universal gate set. Building on essential code switching building blocks, we construct logical circuits and prepare 12 different logical states which are not accessible natively in a fault-tolerant way within a single code. Finally, we use code switching to entangle two logical qubits employing the full universal gate set in a single logical quantum circuit. Our results experimentally open up a new route towards deterministic control over logical qubits with low auxiliary qubit overhead, not relying on the probabilistic preparation of resource states.
The constituent parts of a quantum computer are inherently vulnerable to errors. To this end, we have developed quantum error-correcting codes to protect quantum information from noise. However, discovering codes that are capable of a universal set of computational operations with the minimal cost in quantum resources remains an important and ongoing challenge. One proposal of significant recent interest is the gauge color code. Notably, this code may offer a reduced resource cost over other well-studied fault-tolerant architectures by using a new method, known as gauge fixing, for performing the non-Clifford operations that are essential for universal quantum computation. Here we examine the gauge color code when it is subject to noise. Specifically, we make use of single-shot error correction to develop a simple decoding algorithm for the gauge color code, and we numerically analyse its performance. Remarkably, we find threshold error rates comparable to those of other leading proposals. Our results thus provide the first steps of a comparative study between the gauge color code and other promising computational architectures.
We show how to absorb fermionic quantum simulation's expensive fermion-to-qubit mapping overhead into the overhead already incurred by surface-code-based fault-tolerant quantum computing. The key idea is to process information in surface-code twist defects, which behave like logical Majorana fermions. Our approach encodes Dirac fermions, a key data type for simulation applications, directly into logical Majorana fermions rather than atop a logical qubit layer in the architecture. Using quantum simulation of the NNN-fermion 2D Fermi-Hubbard model as an exemplar, we demonstrate two immediate algorithmic improvements. First, by preserving the model's locality at the logical level, we reduce the asymptotic Trotter-Suzuki quantum circuit depth from O(N)\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{N})O(N​) in a typical Jordan-Wigner encoding to O(1)\mathcal{O}(1)O(1) in our encoding. Second, by exploiting optimizations manifest for logical fermions but less obvious for logical qubits, we reduce the TTT-count of the block-encoding \textsc{select} oracle by 20\% over standard implementations, even when realized by logical qubits and not logical fermions.