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arXiv:2606.09678

The dynamic 4.8.8 Floquet code

Aliki A. Capatos

quant-phSubmitted Jun 8, 2026• Announced Jun 9, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Fault-tolerant quantum memories depend on the syndrome extraction circuit as much as on the underlying code. Ancilla-free or dynamic circuits are an effective way to improve this circuit layer. For the 6.6.6 honeycomb Floquet code, making the circuit dynamic raises the threshold and lowers the qubit overhead, but at the cost of halving the spatial code distance. A dynamic construction for the 4.8.8 lattice layout was conjectured to preserve full distance. I confirm this and give a dynamic measurement circuit for the CSS 4.8.8 Floquet code. To benchmark it, I construct and compare four circuit-level implementations on a torus, including two dynamic variants (with and without mid-circuit resets), the standard ancilla-based circuit, and a pipelined ancilla-based circuit. Under circuit-level depolarising noise, the reset dynamic circuit reaches a per-round threshold of $0.463\%$ $(0.490\%)$ with MWPM (BP+matching), while the no-reset variant reaches the highest threshold of all four circuits at $0.512\%$ $(0.574\%)$. The standard ancilla-based circuit only achieves $0.228\%$ $(0.240\%)$, but the pipelined schedule reaches $0.478\%$ $(0.489\%)$. The reset dynamic circuit also has a faster-growing timelike distance, with $2\le d_t/n_{\mathrm{qec}}\le 3$ asymptotically against a tight $3/2$ for the other three, and running it for fewer rounds gives the smallest spacetime volume in the fast-reset regime, while the no-reset variant is smallest in the slow-reset regime. The 4.8.8 dynamic circuits therefore see the expected threshold gain and overhead reduction without the spatial-distance cost, demonstrating the advantage of dynamic syndrome extraction in Floquet codes.

Comments
15 pages, 7 figures

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Fault-tolerant quantum memories depend on the syndrome extraction circuit as much as on the underlying code. Ancilla-free or dynamic circuits are an effective way to improve this circuit layer. For the 6.6.6 honeycomb Floquet code, making the circuit dynamic raises the threshold and lowers the qubit overhead, but at the cost of halving the spatial code distance. A dynamic construction for the 4.8.8 lattice layout was conjectured to preserve full distance. I confirm this and give a dynamic measurement circuit for the CSS 4.8.8 Floquet code. To benchmark it, I construct and compare four circuit-level implementations on a torus, including two dynamic variants (with and without mid-circuit resets), the standard ancilla-based circuit, and a pipelined ancilla-based circuit. Under circuit-level depolarising noise, the reset dynamic circuit reaches a per-round threshold of 0.463%0.463\%0.463% (0.490%)(0.490\%)(0.490%) with MWPM (BP+matching), while the no-reset variant reaches the highest threshold of all four circuits at 0.512%0.512\%0.512% (0.574%)(0.574\%)(0.574%). The standard ancilla-based circuit only achieves 0.228%0.228\%0.228% (0.240%)(0.240\%)(0.240%), but the pipelined schedule reaches 0.478%0.478\%0.478% (0.489%)(0.489\%)(0.489%). The reset dynamic circuit also has a faster-growing timelike distance, with 2≤dt/nqec≤32\le d_t/n_{\mathrm{qec}}\le 32≤dt​/nqec​≤3 asymptotically against a tight 3/23/23/2 for the other three, and running it for fewer rounds gives the smallest spacetime volume in the fast-reset regime, while the no-reset variant is smallest in the slow-reset regime. The 4.8.8 dynamic circuits therefore see the expected threshold gain and overhead reduction without the spatial-distance cost, demonstrating the advantage of dynamic syndrome extraction in Floquet codes.
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The realization of quantum error correction protocols whose logical error rates are suppressed far below physical error rates relies on an intricate combination: the error-correcting code's efficiency, the syndrome extraction circuit's fault tolerance and overhead, the decoder's quality, and the device's constraints, such as physical qubit count and connectivity. This work makes two contributions towards error-corrected quantum devices. First, we introduce mirror codes, a simple yet flexible construction of LDPC stabilizer codes parameterized by a group GGG and two subsets of GGG whose total size bounds the check weight. These codes contain all abelian two-block group algebra codes, such as bivariate bicycle (BB) codes. At the same time, they are manifestly not CSS in general, thus deviating substantially from most prior constructions. Fixing a check weight of 6, we find [[60,4,10]],[[36,6,6]],[[48,8,6]][[ 60, 4, 10 ]], [[ 36, 6, 6 ]], [[ 48, 8, 6 ]][[60,4,10]],[[36,6,6]],[[48,8,6]], and [[85,8,9]][[ 85, 8, 9 ]][[85,8,9]] codes, all of which are not CSS; we also find several weight-7 codes with kd>nkd > nkd>n. Next, we construct syndrome extraction circuits that trade overhead for provable fault tolerance. These circuits use 1-2, 3, and 6 ancillae per check, and respectively are partially fault-tolerant (FT), provably FT on weight-6 CSS codes, and provably FT on \emph{all} weight-6 stabilizer codes. Using our constructions, we perform end-to-end quantum memory experiments on several representative mirror codes under circuit-level noise. We achieve an error pseudothreshold on the order of 0.2%0.2\%0.2%, approximately matching that of the [[144,12,12]][[ 144, 12, 12 ]][[144,12,12]] BB code under the same model. These findings position mirror codes as a versatile candidate for fault-tolerant quantum memory, especially on smaller-scale devices in the near term.
In the typical implementation of a quantum error-correcting code, each stabilizer is measured by entangling one or more ancilla qubits with the data qubits and measuring the ancilla qubits to deduce the value of the stabilizer. Recently, the dynamic circuit approach has been introduced, in which stabilizers are measured without ancilla qubits. Here, we demonstrate that dynamic circuits are particularly useful for the Floquet code. Our dynamic circuit increases the timelike distance of the code, automatically removes leakage, and both significantly increases the threshold and lowers the logical error rate compared to the standard ancilla-based circuit. At a physical error rate of ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$, we estimate a nearly $3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}$ reduction in the number of qubits required to reach a ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}12}$ logical error rate.
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We devise a new realization of the surface code on a rectangular lattice of qubits utilizing single-qubit and nearest-neighbor two-qubit Pauli measurements and three auxiliary qubits per plaquette. This realization gains substantial advantages over prior pairwise measurement-based realizations of the surface code. It has a short operation period of 4 steps and our performance analysis for a standard circuit noise model yields a high fault-tolerance threshold of approximately 0.66 % . The syndrome extraction circuits avoid bidirectional hook errors, so we can achieve full code distance by choosing appropriate boundary conditions. We also construct variants of the syndrome extraction circuits that entirely prevent hook errors, at the cost of larger circuit depth. This achieves full distance regardless of boundary conditions, with only a modest decrease in the threshold. Furthermore, we propose an efficient strategy for dealing with dead components (qubits and measurements) in our surface code realization, which can be adopted more generally for other surface code realizations. This new surface code realization is highly optimized for Majorana-based hardware, accounting for constraints imposed by layouts and the implementation of measurements, making it competitive with the recently proposed Floquet codes.
Building reliable quantum computers requires protecting fragile quantum states from inevitable environmental noise and operational errors. While quantum error correction codes like the Steane [ ⁣[7,1,3] ⁣][\![7,1,3]\!][[7,1,3]] code provide elegant theoretical solutions, their practical success hinges critically on how we measure errors - a process called syndrome extraction. The challenge lies in the ancilla qubits used for measurement: when they fail, errors can cascade across the entire quantum system, destroying the very information we're trying to protect. We address this fundamental problem by implementing and comparing three sophisticated syndrome measurement strategies: Shor's cat-state approach, which distributes measurements across multiple entangled ancillas achieving 85-92% preparation success; Steane's encoded-ancilla method using complete error-corrected logical qubits reaching 97.8% syndrome fidelity; and a flexible unified framework that adapts strategies based on hardware capabilities. Through extensive simulations using IBM's Qiskit platform spanning randomized benchmarking and T-heavy circuits, we demonstrate that intelligent ancilla management improves error suppression by up to 2.4×\times× compared to standard approaches. Our implementations achieve logical error rates as low as 5.1×10−55.1 \times 10^{-5}5.1×10−5 under realistic noise conditions with physical error rates of 10−310^{-3}10−3, while maintaining near-unity logical fidelity (0.99997) even for deep circuits. The threshold analysis reveals robust performance across distance-3 to distance-13 codes with characteristic threshold curves showing exponential error suppression below the critical physical error rate. These results provide immediately deployable tools for near-term quantum devices and establish practical design principles for scaling toward fault-tolerant quantum computers.