Code switching is an established technique that facilitates a universal set of FT quantum gate operations by combining two QEC codes with complementary sets of gates, which each by themselves are easy to implement fault-tolerantly. In this work, we present a code switching scheme that respects the constraints of FT circuit design by only making use of transversal gates. These gates are intrinsically FT without additional qubit overhead. We analyze application of the scheme to low-distance color codes, which are suitable for operation in existing quantum processors, for instance based on trapped ions or neutral atoms. We briefly discuss connectivity constraints that arise for architectures based on superconducting qubits. Numerical simulations of circuit-level noise indicate that a logical T -gate, facilitated by our scheme, could outperform both flag-FT magic state injection protocols and a physical T -gate at low physical error rates. Transversal code switching naturally scales to code pairs of arbitrary code distance. We observe improved performance of a distance-5 protocol compared to both the distance-3 implementation and the physical gate for realistically attainable physical entangling gate error rates. We discuss how the scheme can be implemented with a large degree of parallelization, provided that logical auxiliary qubits can be prepared reliably enough. Our logical T -gate circumvents potentially costly magic state factories. The requirements to perform QEC and to achieve an FT universal gate set are then essentially the same: Prepare logical auxiliary qubits offline, execute transversal gates and perform fast-enough measurements. Transversal code switching thus serves to enable more practical hardware realizations of FT universal quantum computation. The scheme alleviates resource requirements for experimental demonstrations of quantum algorithms run on logical qubits.
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.
We study the use of triorthogonal codes for universal fault-tolerant quantum computation and propose two methods to circumvent the Eastin-Knill theorem, which prohibits any single quantum error-correcting code from supporting both universality and a transversal gate set. We show that our methods reduce the resource overhead compared with existing fault-tolerant protocols. We develop a simple fault-tolerant implementation of the logical Hadamard gate for triorthogonal codes by exploiting the fact that they have transversal controlled-Z (CZ) gates, resulting in a circuit with reduced overhead. We also introduce a procedure for generating a symmetric Calderbank-Shor-Steane code paired with a triorthogonal code, which allows CNOT and CZ gate transversality across the pair of codes. In addition, we present logical state teleportation circuits that transfer encoded states between the two codes, allowing all logical operations to be performed transversally. Our methods can be integrated into the Steane error correction framework without incurring additional resource cost. Finally, using the 15-qubit code as an example, we demonstrate that our protocols significantly reduce the gate overhead compared with other existing methods. These results highlight the potential of combining distinct code structures to achieve low-overhead, universal fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Quantum error correction is a crucial tool for mitigating hardware errors in quantum computers by encoding logical information into multiple physical qubits. However, no single error-correcting code allows for an intrinsically fault-tolerant implementation of all the gates needed for universal quantum computing [1-3]. One way to tackle this problem is to switch between two suitable error-correcting codes, while preserving the encoded logical information, which in combination give access to a fault-tolerant universal gate set [4-6]. In this work, we present the first experimental implementation of fault-tolerant code switching between two codes. One is the seven-qubit color code [7], which features fault-tolerant CNOT and
H quantum gates, while the other one, the 10-qubit code [8], allows for a fault-tolerant
T-gate implementation. Together they form a complementary universal gate set. Building on essential code switching building blocks, we construct logical circuits and prepare 12 different logical states which are not accessible natively in a fault-tolerant way within a single code. Finally, we use code switching to entangle two logical qubits employing the full universal gate set in a single logical quantum circuit. Our results experimentally open up a new route towards deterministic control over logical qubits with low auxiliary qubit overhead, not relying on the probabilistic preparation of resource states.
Fault-tolerant quantum computers rely on Quantum Error-Correcting Codes (QECCs) to protect information from noise. However, no single error-correcting code supports a fully transversal and therefore fault-tolerant implementation of all gates required for universal quantum computation. Code switching addresses this limitation by moving quantum information between different codes that, together, support a universal gate set. Unfortunately, each switch is costly-adding time and space overhead and increasing the logical error rate. Minimizing the number of switching operations is, therefore, essential for quantum computations using code switching. In this work, we study the problem of minimizing the number of code switches required to run a given quantum circuit. We show that this problem can be solved efficiently in polynomial time by reducing it to a minimum-cut instance on a graph derived from the circuit. Our formulation is flexible and can incorporate additional considerations, such as reducing depth overhead by preferring switches during idle periods or biasing the compilation to favor one code over another. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first automated approach for compiling and optimizing code-switching-based quantum computations at the logical level.
Transversal gates on quantum error correction codes have been a promising approach for fault-tolerant quantum computing, but are limited by the Eastin-Knill no-go theorem. Existing solutions such as gate teleportation and magic state distillation are resource-intensive. We present a measurement-free code-switching protocol for universal quantum computation, switching between a stabilizer code for transversal Clifford gates and a permutation-invariant (PI) code for transversal non-Clifford gates that are logical Z rotations for any rational multiple of π . The novel non-Clifford gates enabled by this code-switching protocol provide for a lower gate count implementation of a universal gate set relative to the Clifford + T gate set. To achieve this, we present a protocol for performing controlled- gates between the codes using near-term quantum control operations that employ a catalytic bosonic mode. We also present a new class of PI codes with tunable code distance, supporting transversal non-Clifford gates, and demonstrate their reduced gate count overhead relative to a comparable stabilizer code to stabilizer code-switching scheme.