High-rate and large-distance quantum codes are expected to make fault-tolerant quantum computing more efficient, but most of them lack efficient fault-tolerant encoded-state preparation methods. We propose such a fault-tolerant encoder for a [[30, 6, 5]] symplectic double code. The advantage of this code is its compactness, in addition to its high encoding rate, allowing for early experimental realization. Detecting crucial errors during encoding with as few auxiliary qubits as possible, our encoder can reduce resource overheads while keeping low logical error rates, compared to more naive methods. Numerical simulations with a circuit-level noise model demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method. We also develop an arbitrary-state encoder that enables the injection of arbitrary quantum states into the code space. Combined with basic fault-tolerant operations, this supports universal quantum computation. We thus demonstrate that efficient and reliable logical state preparation is achievable even for a compact and high-rate code, offering a potential step toward efficient fault-tolerant quantum computing suitable for near-term experiments.
High-rate and large-distance quantum codes are expected to make fault-tolerant quantum computing more efficient, but most of them lack efficient fault-tolerant encoded-state preparation methods. We propose such a fault-tolerant encoder for a [[30, 6, 5]] symplectic double code. The advantage of this code is its compactness, in addition to its high encoding rate, allowing for early experimental realization. Detecting crucial errors during encoding with as few auxiliary qubits as possible, our encoder can reduce resource overheads while keeping low logical error rates, compared to more naive methods. Numerical simulations with a circuit-level noise model demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method. We also develop an arbitrary-state encoder that enables the injection of arbitrary quantum states into the code space. Combined with basic fault-tolerant operations, this supports universal quantum computation. We thus demonstrate that efficient and reliable logical state preparation is achievable even for a compact and high-rate code, offering a potential step toward efficient fault-tolerant quantum computing suitable for near-term experiments.
Quantum error correction allows one to make quantum computers fault-tolerant against unavoidable errors due to decoherence and imperfect physical gate operations. However, the fault-tolerant quantum computation requires impractically large computational resources for useful applications. This is a current major obstacle to the realization of a quantum computer. In particular, magic state distillation, which is a standard approach to universality, consumes the most resources in fault-tolerant quantum computation. For the resource problem, here we propose step-by-step magic state encoding for concatenated quantum codes, where magic states are encoded step by step from the physical level to the logical one. To manage errors during the encoding, we carefully use error detection. Since the sizes of intermediate codes are small, it is expected that the resource overheads will become lower than previous approaches based on the distillation at the logical level. Our simulation results suggest that the resource requirements for a logical magic state will become comparable to those for a single logical controlled-NOT gate. Thus, the present method opens a new possibility for efficient fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Quantum computation promises to revolutionize information processing by exploiting superposition and entanglement, enabling applications such as quantum simulation, combinatorial optimization, and secure quantum communication. Beyond individual processors, the quantum internet aims to connect quantum nodes through entanglement distribution, enabling distributed computation. However, quantum states are fragile: environmental interactions, imperfect gate operations, and measurement errors can quickly degrade encoded information. Reliable quantum computation therefore requires carefully designed quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerant protocols. Unlike classical redundancy schemes, quantum error correction must preserve delicate phase relationships and relies on indirect error detection through syndrome extraction with ancillary qubits, enabling error identification without collapsing encoded states. Topological codes, in particular, emerged early as the preferred choice for many architectures due to their planar structure, local interactions, and natural support for fault-tolerant logical operations. Color codes, for instance, allow transversal implementation of all Clifford gates, whereas non-Clifford operations require magic-state injection. More recent constructions, including quantum low-density parity-check codes, offer higher encoding rates and reduced resource overhead, but require long-range qubit connectivity and more complex protocols. Despite experimental progress, several challenges remain. Many platforms exhibit biased noise, motivating codes that exploit channel asymmetry. Real-time decoding remains a critical bottleneck, as fault-tolerant computation requires low-latency processing of rapidly generated syndrome data. Fault-tolerant logical state initialization also remains resource-intensive and scales poorly with code distance. Addressing these challenges, this thesis develops a unified framework spanning theory and experiment. It provides precise performance analysis of quantum error-correcting codes in the low physical error-rate regime, introduces codes tailored to biased noise, develops fast low-complexity decoding algorithms for real-time operation, and presents modular and efficient protocols for fault-tolerant state preparation of CSS codes. The latter is demonstrated experimentally through the preparation of a logical zero state of the Golay code on the Quantinuum H2 trapped-ion quantum computer.
Many-hypercube codes, concatenated [[n,n−2,2]] quantum error-detecting codes (n is even), have recently been proposed as high-rate quantum codes suitable for fault-tolerant quantum computing. While the original many-hypercube codes with n=6 can achieve remarkably high encoding rates (about 30% and 20% at concatenation levels 3 and 4, respectively), they have large code block sizes at high levels (216 and 1296 physical qubits per block at levels 3 and 4, respectively), making not only experimental realization difficult but also logical error rates per code block high. Toward earlier experimental realization and lower logical error rates, here we comprehensively investigate smaller many-hypercube codes with [[6,4,2]] and/or [[4,2,2]] codes, where, e.g., D6,4,4 denotes the many-hypercube code using [[6,4,2]] at level 1 and [[4,2,2]] at levels 2 and 3. As a result, we found a counterintuitive fact that D6,4,4 (D6,6,4,4) can achieve lower logical error rates per code block than D4,4,4 (D4,4,4,4), despite its higher encoding rate and larger code block size. Focusing on level 3, we also developed efficient fault-tolerant encoders realizing about 60% overhead reduction while maintaining or even improving the performance, compared to the original design. Using them, we numerically confirmed that D6,4,4 also achieves the best performance for logical controlled-NOT gates in a circuit-level noise model. These results are important for targeting a high-rate code toward early experimental realization of efficient fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Standard approaches to quantum error correction for fault-tolerant quantum computing are based on encoding a single logical qubit into many physical ones, resulting in asymptotically zero encoding rates and therefore huge resource overheads. To overcome this issue, high-rate quantum codes, such as quantum low-density parity-check codes, have been studied over the past decade. In this case, however, it is difficult to perform logical gates in parallel while maintaining low overheads. Here, we propose concatenated high-rate small-size quantum error-detecting codes as a family of high-rate quantum codes. Their simple structure allows for a geometrical interpretation using hypercubes corresponding to logical qubits. We thus call them many-hypercube codes. They can realize both high rates, e.g., 30% (64 logical qubits are encoded into 216 physical ones), and parallelizability of logical gates. Developing dedicated decoder and encoders, we achieve high error thresholds even in a circuit-level noise model. Thus, the many-hypercube codes will pave the way to high-performance fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Quantum computers promise to solve computational problems that are inaccessible to classical machines. The reliable execution of large-scale quantum algorithms requires robust operations in the presence of noise. Quantum error correction addresses this challenge by encoding quantum information redundantly across several physical qubits, such that errors can be detected and corrected during a computation. However, no single error-correcting code intrinsically supports an inherently robust, fault-tolerant implementation of all gates needed for universal quantum computing. Moreover, most modern approaches to both quantum error correction and the implementation of universal logical operations on encoded qubits rely on mid-circuit measurements and feed-forward control. These types of operations are technologically demanding, often slow, and prone to high error rates, and they limit the overall success probability of quantum algorithms. In this thesis, we develop fault-tolerant protocols and circuits for quantum error correction and universal logical computation, with an emphasis on implementations compatible with current hardware systems. We first focus on fault-tolerant quantum error correction on small codes. By comparing different protocols, we identify trade-offs between compact circuit constructions and their robustness to noise. We then assess their practical performance by comparing numerical simulations of noisy circuits with experimental data. Beyond the preservation of encoded information, we study how universal logic can be implemented in a fault-tolerant manner on encoded qubits. A central approach considered in this thesis is code switching, in which logical information is transferred between two distinct error-correcting codes that support complementary sets of inherently fault-tolerant logical gates. In combination, these codes give access to a complete universal fault-tolerant logical gate set. In this thesis, we determine conditions that allow us to construct fault-tolerant protocols for code switching. We adapt these protocols to the capabilities of current hardware, thereby enabling the first experimental realization of universal fault-tolerant logic by means of code switching. However, the overall performance of these schemes is limited by slow and noisy mid-circuit measurements. To address this bottleneck, we construct a suite of measurement-free fault-tolerant universal operations that do not require any measurements during the execution of an algorithm. In this framework, error correction and logical operations are implemented coherently as part of the quantum circuit, without mid-circuit measurements or in-sequence classical control. We introduce measurement-free code-switching schemes that can be scaled to arbitrary code distances through concatenation, and which thereby provide, in principle, arbitrarily strong error suppression. We further tailor our approach to the capabilities of current trapped-ion quantum processors. New circuit constructions support the first experimental implementation of a logical quantum algorithm without mid-circuit measurements, demonstrated through Grover's search on three encoded qubits. Together, the results of this thesis expand the toolbox for early fault-tolerant quantum computation. They show how protocols for quantum error correction and universal logical gates can be designed without mid-circuit measurements with realistic hardware constraints in mind, opening new pathways towards universal quantum logic.
Preparing arbitrary logical states is a central primitive for universal fault-tolerant quantum computation and the cost of encoded-state preparation contributes directly to the overall resource overhead. This makes the synthesis of efficient general-state encoding circuits an important problem, particularly with respect to two-qubit gate count and circuit depth. Yet the synthesis of such encoders has been studied less extensively than general Clifford circuit synthesis or the preparation of specific logical Pauli-eigenstates. In this work, we develop methods for synthesizing efficient encoders for arbitrary stabilizer codes. We formulate encoder synthesis as a search over stabilizer tableaus and introduce greedy and rollout-based algorithms that exploit the freedom among stabilizer-equivalent realizations of the same encoding isometry. For code families with a modular structure, such as generalized concatenated and holographic codes, we show how large encoders can be assembled from optimized local constituent encoders, and we use SMT-based exact synthesis to obtain optimal local circuits for small instances. We further evaluate the proposed methods on a broad set of stabilizer codes, including holographic and quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes, and compare them against recent encoder-synthesis methods and existing constructions from the literature, obtaining improvements of up to 43% in two-qubit gate count and up to 70% in depth. Our results support the optimization of encoded-state preparation in several fault-tolerant quantum-computing schemes, and all methods are openly available as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit.