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arXiv:1810.00047 · Physical Review A

Quantum error correction with the toric Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code

Christophe Vuillot, Hamed Asasi, Yang Wang, Leonid P. Pryadko, Barbara M. Terhal

Published Mar 26, 2019• 141 citations
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Abstract

We examine the performance of the single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code and its concatenation with the toric code for a noise model of Gaussian shifts, or displacement errors. We show how one can optimize the tracking of errors in repeated noisy error correction for the GKP code. We do this by examining the maximum-likelihood problem for this setting and its mapping onto a 1D Euclidean path-integral modeling a particle in a random cosine potential. We demonstrate the efficiency of a minimum-energy decoding strategy as a proxy for the path integral evaluation. In the second part of this paper, we analyze and numerically assess the concatenation of the GKP code with the toric code. When toric code measurements and GKP error correction measurements are perfect, we find that by using GKP error information the toric code threshold improves from $10%$ to $14%$. When only the GKP error correction measurements are perfect we observe a threshold at $6%$. In the more realistic setting when all error information is noisy, we show how to represent the maximum likelihood decoding problem for the toric-GKP code as a 3D compact QED model in the presence of a quenched random gauge field, an extension of the random-plaquette gauge model for the toric code. We present a decoder for this problem which shows the existence of a noise threshold at shift-error standard deviation ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}0.243$ for toric code measurements, data errors and GKP ancilla errors. If the errors only come from having imperfect GKP states, then this corresponds to states with just four photons or more. Our last result is a no-go result for linear oscillator codes, encoding oscillators into oscillators. For the Gaussian displacement error model, we prove that encoding corresponds to squeezing the shift errors. This shows that linear oscillator codes are useless for quantum information protection against Gaussian shift errors.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.99.032344

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Gottesman, Kitaev and Preskill have proposed a scheme to encode a qubit in a harmonic oscillator, which is called the GKP code. It is designed to be resistant to small shift errors contained in momentum and position quadratures. Thus there's some intrinsic fault tolerance of the GKP code. In this thesis,we propose a method to utilize all the information contained in the continuous shifts, not just simply map a GKP-encoded qubit to a normal qubit. This method enables us to do maximum-likelihood decisions and thus increase fault-tolerance of the GKP code. This thesis shows that the continuous nature of the GKP code is quite useful for quantum error correction.

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We examine the performance of the single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code and its concatenation with the toric code for a noise model of Gaussian shifts, or displacement errors. We show how one can optimize the tracking of errors in repeated noisy error correction for the GKP code. We do this by examining the maximum-likelihood problem for this setting and its mapping onto a 1D Euclidean path-integral modeling a particle in a random cosine potential. We demonstrate the efficiency of a minimum-energy decoding strategy as a proxy for the path integral evaluation. In the second part of this paper, we analyze and numerically assess the concatenation of the GKP code with the toric code. When toric code measurements and GKP error correction measurements are perfect, we find that by using GKP error information the toric code threshold improves from 1010%10 to 1414%14. When only the GKP error correction measurements are perfect we observe a threshold at 66%6. In the more realistic setting when all error information is noisy, we show how to represent the maximum likelihood decoding problem for the toric-GKP code as a 3D compact QED model in the presence of a quenched random gauge field, an extension of the random-plaquette gauge model for the toric code. We present a decoder for this problem which shows the existence of a noise threshold at shift-error standard deviation \ensuremathσ0\ensuremath≈0.243{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}0.243\ensuremathσ0​\ensuremath≈0.243 for toric code measurements, data errors and GKP ancilla errors. If the errors only come from having imperfect GKP states, then this corresponds to states with just four photons or more. Our last result is a no-go result for linear oscillator codes, encoding oscillators into oscillators. For the Gaussian displacement error model, we prove that encoding corresponds to squeezing the shift errors. This shows that linear oscillator codes are useless for quantum information protection against Gaussian shift errors.
The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code is an important type of bosonic quantum error-correcting code. Since the GKP code only protects against small shift errors in $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}$ and $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{q}$ quadratures, it is necessary to concatenate the GKP code with a stabilizer code for the larger error correction. In this paper, we consider the concatenation of the single-mode GKP code with the two-dimensional (2D) color code (color-GKP code) on the square-octagon lattice. We use the Steane-type scheme with a maximum-likelihood estimation for GKP error correction and show its advantage for the concatenation. In our main paper, the minimum-weight perfect matching algorithm is applied to decode the color-GKP code. Complemented with the continuous-variable information from the GKP code, the threshold of the 2D color code is improved. If only data GKP qubits are noisy, the threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.59(\overline{p}\ensuremath{\approx}13.3%)$ compared with p‾=10.2\overline{p}=10.2%p​=10.2 of the normal 2D color code. If measurements are also noisy, we introduce the generalized restriction decoder on the three-dimensional space-time graph for decoding. The threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.46$ when measurements in the GKP error correction are noiseless, and $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.24$ when all measurements are noisy. Lastly, the good performance of the generalized restriction decoder is also shown on the normal 2D color code giving the threshold at 3.13.1%3.1 under the phenomenological error model.
We study the code obtained by concatenating the standard single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code with the surface code. We show that the noise tolerance of this surface--GKP code with respect to (Gaussian) displacement errors improves when a single-mode squeezing unitary is applied to each mode, assuming that the identification of quadratures with logical Pauli operators is suitably modified. We observe noise-tolerance thresholds of up to $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.58$ shift-error standard deviation when the surface code is decoded without using GKP syndrome information. In contrast, prior results by K. Fukui, A. Tomita, A. Okamoto, and K. Fujii, High-Threshold Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Analog Quantum Error Correction, Phys. Rev. X 8, 021054 (2018) and C. Vuillot, H. Asasi, Y. Wang, L. P. Pryadko, and B. M. Terhal, Quantum error correction with the toric Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code, Phys. Rev. A 99, 032344 (2019) report a threshold between $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.54$ and $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.55$ for the standard (toric, respectively) surface--GKP code. The modified surface--GKP code effectively renders the mode-level physical noise asymmetric, biasing the logical-level noise on the GKP qubits. The code can thus benefit from the resilience of the surface code against biased noise. We use the approximate maximum likelihood decoding algorithm of S. Bravyi, M. Suchara, and A. Vargo, Efficient algorithms for maximum likelihood decoding in the surface code, Phys. Rev. A 90, 032326 (2014) to obtain our threshold estimates. Throughout, we consider an idealized scenario where measurements are noiseless and GKP states are ideal. Our paper demonstrates that Gaussian encodings of individual modes can enhance concatenated codes.
Bosonic codes provide an alternative option for quantum error correction. An important category of bosonic codes called the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code has aroused much interest recently. Theoretically, the error correction ability of the GKP code is limited since it can only correct small shift errors in position and momentum quadratures. A natural approach to promote the GKP error correction for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation is concatenating encoded GKP states with a stabilizer code. The performance of the XZZX surface-GKP code, i.e., the single-mode GKP code concatenated with the XZZX surface code is investigated in this paper under two different noise models. Firstly, in the code-capacity noise model, the asymmetric rectangular GKP code with parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ is introduced. Using the minimum weight perfect matching decoder combined with the continuous-variable GKP information, the optimal threshold of the XZZX-surface GKP code reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.67$ when $\ensuremath{\lambda}=2.1$, compared with the threshold $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.60$ of the standard surface-GKP code. Secondly, we analyze the shift errors of two-qubit gates in the actual implementation and build the full circuit-level noise model. By setting the appropriate bias parameters, the logical error rate is reduced by several times in some cases. These results indicate the XZZX surface-GKP codes are more suitable for asymmetric concatenation under the general noise models. We also estimate the overhead of the XZZX-surface GKP code which uses about 291 GKP states with the noise parameter 18.5 dB ($\ensuremath{\kappa}/g\ensuremath{\approx}0.71%$) to encode a logical qubit with the error rate $2.53\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$, compared with the qubit-based surface code using 3041 qubits to achieve almost the same logical error rate.
In order to solve practical problems on a quantum computer, it is necessary to use fault-tolerant quantum error correction schemes to overcome noise: the errors arising from imperfections in physical components. The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code aims at achieving this in a hardware efficient manner by encoding finite-dimensional logical subspaces in the Hilbert space of one or more continuous variable modes. In near term implementations, however, it is not feasible to eliminate errors entirely, so it is natural to also employ alternative error mitigation techniques together with error correction. In this work, we study a quantum error mitigation method known as probabilistic error cancellation in the context of the GKP code. We compare Steane-type and teleportation-based GKP error correction, and calculate the sampling overheads associated with the technique for square and hexagonal GKP codes. We employ the stabilizer subsystem decomposition for GKP codes to obtain an effective logical channel for noisy operations that is used to express the ideal one of a target logical unitary. We consider noise from finite squeezing on the data and the two ancilla modes, needed for error correction, and examine the relationship between the sampling overhead and the noise for different decoding methods. Our results are calculated for single- and two-qubit GKP Clifford gates and one round of error correction, and show the nontrivial combination of error correction and mitigation in continuous variable codes.
Quantum error correction (QEC) plays an essential role in fault-tolerantly realizing quantum algorithms of practical interest.Among different approaches to QEC, encoding logical quantum information in harmonic oscillator modes has been shown to be promising and hardware efficient.In this work, we study multimode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes, encoding a qubit in many oscillators, through a lattice perspective.In particular, we implement a closest point decoding strategy for correcting random Gaussian shift errors.For decoding a generic multimode GKP code, we first identify its corresponding lattice followed by finding the closest lattice point in its symplectic dual lattice to a candidate shift error compatible with the error syndrome.We use this method to characterize the error-correction capabilities of several known multimode GKP codes, including their code distances and fidelities.We also perform numerical optimization of multimode GKP codes up to ten modes and find three instances (with three, seven, and nine modes) with better code distances and fidelities compared to the known GKP codes with the same number of modes.While exact closest point decoding incurs exponential time cost in the number of modes for general unstructured GKP codes, we give several examples of structured GKP codes (i.e., of the repetition-rectangular GKP code types) where the closest point decoding can be performed exactly in linear time.For the surface-GKP code, we show that the closest point decoding can be performed exactly in polynomial time with the help of a minimum-weight-perfect-matching algorithm (MWPM).We show that this MWPM closest point decoder improves both the fidelity and the noise threshold of the surface-GKP code to 0.602 compared to the previously studied MWPM decoder assisted by log-likelihood analog information, which yields a noise threshold of 0.599.
Gottesman, Kitaev and Preskill have proposed a scheme to encode a qubit in a harmonic oscillator, which is called the GKP code. It is designed to be resistant to small shift errors contained in momentum and position quadratures. Thus there's some intrinsic fault tolerance of the GKP code. In this thesis,we propose a method to utilize all the information contained in the continuous shifts, not just simply map a GKP-encoded qubit to a normal qubit. This method enables us to do maximum-likelihood decisions and thus increase fault-tolerance of the GKP code. This thesis shows that the continuous nature of the GKP code is quite useful for quantum error correction.