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arXiv:2403.06228 · Quantum

Low Overhead Qutrit Magic State Distillation

Shiroman Prakash, Tanay Saha

Published Jun 12, 2025• 3 citations
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Abstract

We show that using qutrits rather than qubits leads to a substantial reduction in the overhead cost associated with an approach to fault-tolerant quantum computing known as magic state distillation. We construct a family of [[9m−k,k,2]]3 triorthogonal qutrit error-correcting codes for any positive integers m and k with k≤3m−2 that are suitable for magic state distillation. In magic state distillation, the number of ancillae required to produce a magic state with target error rate ϵ is O(logγ⁡ϵ−1) , where the yield parameter γ characterizes the overhead cost. For k=3m−2 , our codes have γ=log2⁡(2+63m−2) , which tends to 1 as m→∞ . Moreover, the [[20,7,2]]3 qutrit code that arises from our construction when m=3 already has a yield parameter of 1.51 which outperforms all known qubit triorthogonal codes of size less than a few hundred qubits.

DOI
10.22331/q-2025-06-12-1768

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We show that using qutrits rather than qubits leads to a substantial reduction in the overhead cost associated with an approach to fault-tolerant quantum computing known as magic state distillation. We construct a family of [[9m−k,k,2]]3 triorthogonal qutrit error-correcting codes for any positive integers m and k with k≤3m−2 that are suitable for magic state distillation. In magic state distillation, the number of ancillae required to produce a magic state with target error rate ϵ is O(logγ⁡ϵ−1) , where the yield parameter γ characterizes the overhead cost. For k=3m−2 , our codes have γ=log2⁡(2+63m−2) , which tends to 1 as m→∞ . Moreover, the [[20,7,2]]3 qutrit code that arises from our construction when m=3 already has a yield parameter of 1.51 which outperforms all known qubit triorthogonal codes of size less than a few hundred qubits.
Magic state distillation is a leading but costly approach to fault-tolerant quantum computation, and it is important to explore all possible ways of minimizing its overhead cost. The number of ancillae required to produce a magic state within a target error rate εεε is O(log⁡γ(ε−1))O(\log^γ (ε^{-1}))O(logγ(ε−1)) where γγγ is known as the yield parameter. Hastings and Haah derived a family of distillation protocols with sublogarithmic overhead (i.e., γ<1γ< 1γ<1) based on punctured Reed-Muller codes. Building on work by Campbell \textit{et al.} and Krishna-Tillich, which suggests that qudits of dimension p>2p>2p>2 can significantly reduce overhead, we generalize their construction to qudits of arbitrary prime dimension ppp. We find that, in an analytically tractable puncturing scheme, the number of qudits required to achieve sublogarithmic overhead decreases drastically as ppp increases, and the asymptotic yield parameter approaches 1ln⁡p\frac{1}{\ln p}lnp1​ as p→∞p \to \inftyp→∞. We also perform a small computational search for optimal puncture locations, which results in several interesting triorthogonal codes, including a [[519,106,5]]5[[519,106,5]]_5[[519,106,5]]5​ code with γ=0.99γ=0.99γ=0.99.
Despite significant overhead reductions since its first proposal, magic state distillation is often considered to be a very costly procedure that dominates the resource cost of fault-tolerant quantum computers. The goal of this work is to demonstrate that this is not true. By writing distillation circuits in a form that separates qubits that are capable of error detection from those that are not, most logical qubits used for distillation can be encoded at a very low code distance. This significantly reduces the space-time cost of distillation, as well as the number of qubits. In extreme cases, it can cost less to distill a magic state than to perform a logical Clifford gate on full-distance logical qubits.
Qudits offer the potential for low-overhead magic state distillation, although previous results for asymptotically good codes have required qudit dimension q≫100q\gg 100q≫100 or code length N≫100\mathcal{N}\gg 100N≫100. These parameters far exceed experimental demonstrations of qudit platforms, and thus motivate the search for better codes. Using a novel lifting procedure, we construct the first family of good triorthogonal codes on the F22m\mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}}F22m​ alphabet with m≥3m \geq 3m≥3 that lies above the Tsfasman-Vladut-Zink bound. These codes yield a family of asymptotically good quantum codes with transversal CCZ gates, enabling constant space overhead magic state distillation with qudit dimension as small as q=64q=64q=64. Further, we identify a promising code with parameters [[42,14,6]]64[[42,14,6]]_{64}[[42,14,6]]64​. Finally, we show that a distilled ∣CCZ⟩22m|{CCZ}\rangle_{2^{2m}}∣CCZ⟩22m​ can be reduced to a ∣CCZ⟩2n|{CCZ}\rangle_{2^n}∣CCZ⟩2n​ state for arbitrary nnn with a constant-depth Clifford circuit of at most 9 computational basis measurements, 12 single-qudit and 9 two-qudit Clifford gates.
Magic-state distillation is a resource intensive subroutine for quantum computation. The ratio of noisy input states to output states with an error rate at most ε scales as O(log^{γ}(1/ε)) [S. Bravyi and J. Haah, Magic-state distillation with low overhead, Phys. Rev. A 86, 052329 (2012)10.1103/PhysRevA.86.052329]. In a breakthrough paper, Hastings and Haah [Distillation with Sublogarithmic Overhead, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 050504 (2018)10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.050504] showed that it is possible to construct distillation routines with a sublogarithmic overhead, achieving γ≈0.6779 and falsifying a conjecture that γ is lower bounded by 1. They then ask whether γ can be made arbitrarily close to 0. We answer this question in the affirmative for magic-state distillation routines using qudits of prime dimension (d dimensional quantum systems for prime d).
Abstract Fault-tolerant quantum computing promises significant computational speedup over classical computing for a variety of important problems. One of the biggest challenges for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computing is preparing magic states with sufficiently low error rates. Magic state distillation is one of the most efficient schemes for preparing high-quality magic states. However, since magic state distillation circuits are not fault-tolerant, all the operations in the distillation circuits must be encoded in a large distance error-correcting code, resulting in a significant resource overhead. Here, we propose a fault-tolerant scheme for directly preparing high-quality magic states, which makes magic state distillation unnecessary. In particular, we introduce a concept that we call redundant ancilla encoding. The latter combined with flag qubits allows for circuits to both measure stabilizer generators of some code, while also being able to measure global operators to fault-tolerantly prepare magic states, all using nearest neighbor interactions. We apply such schemes to a planar architecture of the triangular color code family and demonstrate that our scheme requires at least an order of magnitude fewer qubits and space–time overhead compared to the most competitive magic state distillation schemes. Since our scheme requires only nearest-neighbor interactions in a planar architecture, it is suitable for various quantum computing platforms currently under development.
Producing high-fidelity magic states using the smallest possible number of physical qubits and operations stands as a very important challenge to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computation at scale. Besides emerging proposals for alternative methods such as cultivation, magic state distillation remains essential for achieving very low error rates. Known distillation protocols are usually built through quantum codes derived from triorthogonal matrices. Here, exploiting the specific noise structure present in magic state distillation protocols, we show that classical error-correcting codes offer a simpler framework for deriving these protocols. This formulation is particularly well suited to systematic numerical and analytical studies of distillation protocols involving a fixed number of qubits. Specifically, we use a SAT solver to derive a series of no-go theorems that relate key figures of merit, including the number of qubits and the factory distance. In particular, considering the standard implementation as a circuit of Z-diagonal Pauli product rotations followed by measurements, we show that no TTT-to-TTT distillation protocol on fewer than eight qubits can exceed distance 3, and no TTT-to-CCZ\mathrm{CC}ZCCZ protocol distance 2. Our results also include new such distillation protocols with the smallest number of qubits for a given distance in the literature, namely distance 4 and 5 TTT-to-TTT protocols supported on 10 and 11 qubits, as well as distance 3 and 4 TTT-to-CCZ\mathrm{CC}ZCCZ distillation protocols supported on 9 and 10 qubits. Finally, going beyond unitary circuits by recycling qubits through mid-circuit measurement and reinitialization, we obtain an implementation of the distance-5 49T49T49T-to-1T1T1T protocol on only 5 active qubits.