A technique for realizing a universal set of fault-tolerant quantum operations is the code switching method, which leverages two quantum codes with complementary sets of transversal gates. To date, the application of this technique has been largely limited to families of color codes supporting a logical
T gate. No analogous code switching protocols exist for many other prominent families, such as rotated surface codes, or for finer
Z-rotation gates. In this work, we first utilize the doubling technique as a unified framework to construct a class of quantum color codes encoding a single logical qubit with an arbitrarily large minimum distance, enabling the transversal realization of arbitrary small logical
Z-rotation gates. We investigate the structural properties of this code family, demonstrating that they improve upon the parameters of state-of-the-art triorthogonal codes, achieve lower qubit overhead compared to certain known color codes, and admit single-shot decoding of
Z-syndromes via meta-checks. Furthermore, we show that this framework extends beyond color codes; specifically, it enables the generation of
r-orthogonal quantum codes,
r≥2, that inherit the local geometry of rotated surface codes. We then provide an overhead optimization protocol alongside several candidate codes tailored for realizing logical
Z-rotation gates within rotated surface codes. Finally, we extend the fault-tolerant code switching protocol based on transversal CNOT gates to incorporate fault-tolerant realization of
Z-rotation gates at any level of the Clifford hierarchy for geometries compatible with rotated surface codes. We present the first demonstration of fault-tolerant magic state preparation by means of code switching within a distance-three rotated surface code using a total footprint of only 45 physical qubits, and evaluate its performance through a simulation.
Fault-tolerant, error-corrected quantum computation is commonly acknowledged to be crucial to the realization of large-scale quantum algorithms that could lead to extremely impactful scientific or commercial results. Achieving a universal set of quantum gate operations in a fault-tolerant, error-corrected framework suffers from a conservation of unpleasantness. In general, no matter what error-correction technique is employed, there is always one element of a universal gate set that carries a significant resource overhead---either in physical qubits, computational time, or both. Specifically, this is due to the application of non-Clifford gates. A common method for realizing these gates for stabilizer codes such as the surface code is a combination of three protocols: state injection, distillation, and gate teleportation. These protocols contribute to the resource overhead compared with logical operations such as a CNOT gate and contribute to the qubit resources for any error-corrected quantum algorithm. In this paper, we introduce a very simple protocol to potentially reduce this overhead for non-Clifford gates: transversal injection. Transversal injection modifies the initial physical states of all data qubits in a stabilizer code before standard encoding and results in the direct preparation of a large class of single qubit states, including resource states for non-Clifford logic gates. Preliminary results hint at high-quality fidelities at larger distances and motivate further research on this technique.
Fault tolerance is widely regarded as indispensable for achieving scalable and reliable quantum computing. However, the spacetime overhead required for fault-tolerant quantum computating remains prohibitively large. A critical challenge arises in many quantum algorithms with Clifford +
φ compiling, where logical rotation gates
RZL(φ) serve as essential components. The Eastin-Knill theorem prevents their transversal implementation in quantum error correction codes and necessitating resource-intensive workarounds through T-gate compilation combined with magic state distillation and injection. In this work, we consider error-structure-tailored fault tolerance, where fault-tolerance conditions are analyzed by combining perturbative analysis of realistic dissipative noise processes with the structural properties of stabilizer codes. Based on this framework, we design 1-fault-tolerant continuous-angle rotation gates in stabilizer codes, implemented via dispersive-coupling Hamiltonians. Our approach could circumvent the need for T-gate compilation and distillation, offering a hardware-efficient solution that maintains simplicity, minimizes physical footprint, and requires only nearest-neighbor interactions. Integrating with recent small-angle-state preparation techniques, we can suppress the gate error to
91∣φ∣p2 for small rotation angle (where p denotes the physical error rate). For current achievable hardware parameters (
p=10−3), this enables reliable execution of over
107 small-angle rotations when
∣φ∣≈10−3, meeting the requirements of many near-term quantum applications. Compared to the 15-to-1 magic state distillation and magic state cultivation approaches, our method reduces spacetime resource costs by factors of 1337.5 and 43.6, respectively, for a Heisenberg Hamiltonian simulation task under realistic hardware assumptions.
Quantum error correction protects fragile quantum information by encoding it into a larger quantum system. These extra degrees of freedom enable the detection and correction of errors, but also increase the operational complexity of the encoded logical qubit. Fault-tolerant circuits contain the spread of errors while operating the logical qubit, and are essential for realizing error suppression in practice. While fault-tolerant design works in principle, it has not previously been demonstrated in an error-corrected physical system with native noise characteristics. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate fault-tolerant preparation, measurement, rotation, and stabilizer measurement of a Bacon-Shor logical qubit using 13 trapped ion qubits. When we compare these fault-tolerant protocols to non-fault tolerant protocols, we see significant reductions in the error rates of the logical primitives in the presence of noise. The result of fault-tolerant design is an average state preparation and measurement error of 0.6% and a Clifford gate error of 0.3% after error correction. Additionally, we prepare magic states with fidelities exceeding the distillation threshold, demonstrating all of the key single-qubit ingredients required for universal fault-tolerant operation. These results demonstrate that fault-tolerant circuits enable highly accurate logical primitives in current quantum systems. With improved two-qubit gates and the use of intermediate measurements, a stabilized logical qubit can be achieved.
It is an oft cited fact that no quantum code can support a set of fault-tolerant logical gates that is both universal and transversal. This no-go theorem is generally responsible for the interest in alternative universality constructions including magic state distillation. Widely overlooked, however, is the possibility of non-transversal, yet still fault-tolerant, gates that work directly on small quantum codes. Here we demonstrate precisely the existence of such gates. In particular, we show how the limits of non-transversality can be overcome by performing rounds of intermediate error-correction to create logical gates on stabilizer codes that use no ancillas other than those required for syndrome measurement. Moreover, the logical gates we construct, the most prominent examples being Toffoli and controlled-controlled-Z, often complete universal gate sets on their codes. We detail such universal constructions for the smallest quantum codes, the 5-qubit and 7-qubit codes, and then proceed to generalize the approach. One remarkable result of this generalization is that any nondegenerate stabilizer code with a complete set of fault-tolerant single-qubit Clifford gates has a universal set of fault-tolerant gates. Another is the interaction of logical qubits across different stabilizer codes, which, for instance, implies a broadly applicable method of code switching.
We present a set of efficiently implementable logical multi-qubit gates in concatenated quantum error correction codes using parity qubits. In particular, we show how fault-tolerant high-weight rotation gates of arbitrary angle can be implemented on single physical qubits of a classical stabilizer code, or on localized regions of full quantum error correction codes. Similarly, we show how transversal CNOT gates can implement logical parity-controlled-NOT operations between arbitrarily many logical qubits. Both operation types can be implemented and in many cases parallelized without the use of lattice surgery or the need for complicated routing operations.