Quantum error correction is essential for achieving fault-tolerant quantum computing. Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes are particularly effective at correcting continuous noise, such as Gaussian noise and loss, and can significantly reduce overhead when concatenated with qubit error-correcting codes like surface codes. GKP error correction can be implemented using either a teleportation-based method, known as Knill error correction, or a quantum non-demolition-based approach, known as Steane error correction. In this work, we conduct a comprehensive performance analysis of these established GKP error correction schemes, deriving an analytical expression for the post-correction GKP squeezing and displacement errors. Our results show that there is flexibility in choosing the entangling gate used with the teleportation-based Knill approach. Furthermore, when implemented using the recently introduced qunaught states, the Knill approach not only achieves superior GKP squeezing compared to other variants but is also the simplest to realize experimentally in the optical domain.
Quantum error correction is essential for achieving fault-tolerant quantum computing. Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes are particularly effective at correcting continuous noise, such as Gaussian noise and loss, and can significantly reduce overhead when concatenated with qubit error-correcting codes like surface codes. GKP error correction can be implemented using either a teleportation-based method, known as Knill error correction, or a quantum non-demolition-based approach, known as Steane error correction. In this work, we conduct a comprehensive performance analysis of these established GKP error correction schemes, deriving an analytical expression for the post-correction GKP squeezing and displacement errors. Our results show that there is flexibility in choosing the entangling gate used with the teleportation-based Knill approach. Furthermore, when implemented using the recently introduced qunaught states, the Knill approach not only achieves superior GKP squeezing compared to other variants but is also the simplest to realize experimentally in the optical domain.
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.
The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code is a promising bosonic quantum error-correcting code, encoding logical qubits into a bosonic mode in such a way that many physically relevant noise types can be corrected effectively. A particularly relevant noise channel is the pure loss channel, which the GKP code is known to protect against. In particular, it is commonly pointed out that losses can be corrected by the GKP code by transforming the losses into random Gaussian displacements through a quantum-limited amplification channel. However, implementing such amplification in practice is not ideal and could easily introduce an additional overhead of noise from associated experimental imperfections. Here, we analyze the performance of teleportation-based GKP error correction against loss in the absence of an amplification channel. We show that amplification is not required to perform GKP error correction and that performing amplification actually worsens the performance for practically relevant parameter regimes.
The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code is a promising bosonic candidate for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computation. Among existing error-correction protocols for GKP code, the Steane-type scheme is a canonical and widely adopted paradigm, yet its intrinsic noise propagation pattern limits further performance improvement. In this work, we propose a preprocessing-based Steane-type (P-Steane) scheme, which introduces a tunable preprocessing stage with squeezing parameters a and b to actively reshape noise propagation, thereby constituting a parameter framework. This framework spans a spectrum of protocols beyond existing methods, reproducing the performance of both the ME-Steane scheme (a=1, b=1) and the teleportation-based scheme (a=1/2, b=2) as special cases. Crucially, in the small-noise regime and when the data qubit is noisier than the ancilla qubits, P-Steane scheme achieves the minimum product of position- and momentum-quadrature output noise variances when 2a=b, and consistently outperforms the ME-Steane scheme within a specific squeezing-parameter range under this condition.
Fault-tolerant quantum error correction is essential for implementing quantum algorithms of significant practical importance.In this work, we propose a highly effective use of the surface Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code, i.e., the surface code consisting of bosonic GKP qubits instead of bare two-level qubits.In our proposal, we use error-corrected two-qubit gates between GKP qubits and introduce a maximum-likelihood decoding strategy for correcting shift errors in the two-GKP-qubit gates.Our proposed decoding reduces the total CNOT failure rate of the GKP qubits, e.g., from 0.87% to 0.36% at a GKP squeezing of 12 dB, compared to the case where the simple closest-integer decoding is used.Then, by concatenating the GKP code with the surface code, we find that the threshold GKP squeezing is given by 9.9 dB under the the assumption that finite squeezing of the GKP states is the dominant noise source.More importantly, we show that a low logical failure rate p L < 10 -7 can be achieved with moderate hardware requirements, e.g., 291 modes and 97 qubits at a GKP squeezing of 12 dB as opposed to 1457 bare qubits for the standard rotated surface code at an equivalent noise level (i.e., p = 0.36%).Such a low failure rate of our surface-GKP code is possible through the use of space-time correlated edges in the matching graphs of the surface-code decoder.Further, all edge weights in the matching graphs are computed dynamically based on analog information from the GKP error correction using the full history of all syndrome measurement rounds.We also show that a highly squeezed GKP state of GKP squeezing 12 dB can be experimentally realized by using a dissipative stabilization method, namely, the big-small-big method, with fairly conservative experimental parameters.Lastly, we introduce a three-level ancilla scheme to mitigate ancilla decay errors during a GKP state preparation.
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.
To be useful, quantum computers will be required to successfully correct errors occurring at the hardware level. Bosonic codes provide a hardware-efficient option for error correction, but fault-tolerance further requires that the available gate interactions be compatible with the code. A promising bosonic code is the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code, for which a linear beamsplitter-like coupling between two bosonic modes is fault-tolerant, making this a key primitive for building larger systems. Here, using two motional modes of a trapped ion, we demonstrate the generation of entangled states of GKP qubits by interfering two qunaught states, which have a grid structure but carry no logical information, on a beamsplitter. We generate all four Bell states with an average fidelity of 69%, and subsequently demonstrate an extension of the entangled state lifetime through the use of quantum error correction. These results complete the set of Gaussian operations required for quantum computing with GKP codes and enable explorations of multi-mode bosonic encodings as well as fundamental tests of information channels.