Fault-tolerant preparation of logical states is a critical primitive for the realization of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing. This paper introduces SpiderCSS, a scalable compilation pipeline that generates highly-optimized, fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for arbitrary Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes. Starting from an idealized specification of a CSS state, we use the ZX-calculus and fault-equivalent rewrites to construct a diagram that prepares the given state while preserving the fault tolerance of the initial ideal ZX-diagram. From this diagram, SpiderCSS constructs a fault-tolerant CSS-state preparation circuit using a modular construction that is CNOT-minimal both within each component and also in the way these components are connected together. By only using fault-equivalent rewrites, the final circuit is provably fault-tolerant without needing expensive verification. Monte Carlo simulations across a variety of CSS codes up to distance 15 show that SpiderCSS scales efficiently and constructs circuits with substantially reduced depth and qubit footprint compared to existing scalable and heuristic methods, while simultaneously achieving an average decrease of 33.7% in logical error rate and an increase of 9.5% in acceptance rate.
Fault-tolerant preparation of logical states is a critical primitive for the realization of large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing. This paper introduces SpiderCSS, a scalable compilation pipeline that generates highly-optimized, fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for arbitrary Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes. Starting from an idealized specification of a CSS state, we use the ZX-calculus and fault-equivalent rewrites to construct a diagram that prepares the given state while preserving the fault tolerance of the initial ideal ZX-diagram. From this diagram, SpiderCSS constructs a fault-tolerant CSS-state preparation circuit using a modular construction that is CNOT-minimal both within each component and also in the way these components are connected together. By only using fault-equivalent rewrites, the final circuit is provably fault-tolerant without needing expensive verification. Monte Carlo simulations across a variety of CSS codes up to distance 15 show that SpiderCSS scales efficiently and constructs circuits with substantially reduced depth and qubit footprint compared to existing scalable and heuristic methods, while simultaneously achieving an average decrease of 33.7% in logical error rate and an increase of 9.5% in acceptance rate.
The ability to fault-tolerantly prepare CAT states, also known as multi-qubit GHZ states, is an important primitive for quantum error correction. It is required for Shor-style syndrome extraction, and can also be used as a subroutine for doing fault-tolerant state preparation of CSS codewords. Existing approaches to fault-tolerant CAT state preparations have been found using computationally expensive heuristics involving SAT solving, reinforcement learning, or exhaustive analysis. In this paper, we constructively find optimal circuits for CAT states in a more scalable way. In particular, we derive formal lower bounds on the number of CNOT gates required for circuits implementing n-qubit CAT states that do not spread errors of weight at most t for 1≤t≤5. We do this by using fault-equivalent rewrites of ZX-diagrams to reduce it to a problem of characterising certain 3-regular simple graphs. We then provide families of such optimal graphs for infinitely many values of n and t≤5. By encoding the construction of optimal graphs as a constraint satisfaction problem we find explicit constructions for circuits that match this lower bound on CNOT count for all n≤50 and t≤5 and for nearly all pairs (n,t) with n≤100 and t≤5 or n≤50 and t≤7, significantly extending the regimes that were achievable by previous methods and improving the resource counts for existing constructions. We additionally show how to trade CNOT count against depth, allowing us to construct constant-depth fault-tolerant implementations using O(n) ancilla and O(n) CNOT gates.
Fault-tolerant state preparation is essential for reliable quantum error correction, particularly in Steane-type error correction, which relies on robust ancilla states for syndrome readout. One method of fault-tolerant state preparation is to initialize multiple ancilla states and check them against each other to detect problematic errors. In the worst case, the number of states required for successful initialization grows polynomially with the code distance, but it has been shown that this can be reduced to constant ancilla overhead-in the best case, only four states are required. However, existing techniques for finding low-overhead initialization schemes are limited to codes with large symmetry groups, such as the Golay code. In this work, we propose a general, automated synthesis methodology for Steane-type fault-tolerant state preparation circuits that applies to arbitrary Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes and does not rely on code symmetries. We apply the proposed methods to various CSS codes up to a distance of seven and simulate the successful fault-tolerant initialization of logical basis states under circuit-level depolarizing noise. The circuits synthesized using the proposed methodology provide an important step towards experimental realizations of high-fidelity ancilla states for near-term demonstration of fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Fault-tolerant (FT) preparation of diverse logical stabilizer states in quantum error-correcting (QEC) codes is essential for FT computation. Existing constructions of these FT circuits are often constrained by classical computational resources or result in unnecessarily large quantum circuits. This work introduces a modular construction for FT preparation circuits in CSS codes of arbitrary distance, yielding significantly more resource-efficient circuits than previous approaches, especially for the largest codes studied. The key insight is that in bipartite CX circuits used to prepare CSS states, X errors propagate in one direction across the qubit partition, while Z errors propagate in the opposite direction. By appending X-detecting flag gadgets to the first partition and Z-detecting flag gadgets to the second, the circuit becomes FT. To manage the associated overhead, we propose an algorithm that discovers optimal (or near-optimal) flag gadgets at any distance. These gadgets are reusable across different QEC codes and FT subroutines, such as flag-based QEC. We estimate the logical state preparation error using subset-sampling Monte Carlo simulations at the circuit level, combined with approximate maximum-likelihood look-up table decoding. On Quantinuum's H2-1 device, preparation of the ∣0ˉ⟩ state in the [[23,1,7]] Golay code achieves a logical SPAM error rate of 3.3−2.4+8.6×10−4 with an acceptance rate of 47.23(86)%. This surpasses (within 95% confidence intervals) the minimum SPAM error rate of 6.0(1.6)×10−4 for a physical ∣0⟩, as well as the best previously demonstrated logical state preparations.
Modularization promises to break down the design and implementation complexity of large scale quantum processors into smaller manageable subtasks. In this approach, quantum channels, realized for instance through physical rerouting of qubits or quantum teleportation, connect multiple modules. Each of those modules hosts a subset of qubits, e.g. multiple logical qubits, and provides quantum operations on them. In this work, we implement for the first time all logical operations required for modular fault-tolerant universal quantum computing with a non-Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) code, the perfect [[5,1,3]] code, on a trapped-ion quantum computer. This code is the smallest quantum error-correcting (QEC) code capable of correcting any single-qubit error, making it a compact alternative to larger CSS codes. We demonstrate logical state teleportation and a full suite of fault-tolerant operations required for universal logical control, including logical state preparation, QEC with real-time feedback, logical measurements, magic-state preparation, logical entangling operations, and magic-state injection. Moreover, we characterize the logical spectator error picked up by idling logical qubits during quantum operations on distinct qubit registers and demonstrate a logical Pauli quantum process tomography that minimizes required sampling resources for logical tomography.
A central ingredient in fault-tolerant quantum algorithms is the initialization of a logical state for a given quantum error-correcting code from a set of noisy qubits. A scheme that has demonstrated promising results for small code instances that are realizable on currently available hardware composes a non-fault-tolerant state preparation circuit with a verification circuit that checks for spreading errors. Known circuit constructions of this scheme are mostly obtained manually, and no algorithmic techniques for constructing depth- or gate-optimal circuits exist. As a consequence, the current state-of-the-art exploits this scheme only for specific code instances and mostly for the special case of distance d = 3 codes only. In this work, we propose an automated approach for synthesizing fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for arbitrary CSS codes. We utilize methods based on satisfiability solving (SAT) to construct fault-tolerant state preparation circuits consisting of depth- and gate-optimal preparation and verification circuits. We also provide heuristics that can synthesize fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for code instances where no optimal solution can be obtained in an adequate time. Moreover, we give a general construction for nondeterministic state preparation circuits for codes beyond distance 3. Numerical evaluations using d = 3 , d = 5 , and d = 7 codes confirm that the generated circuits exhibit the desired scaling of the logical error rates. The resulting methods are publicly available as part of the (MQT) at . Such methods are an important step in providing fault-tolerant circuit constructions that can aid in near-term demonstrations of fault-tolerant quantum computing.
This paper introduces a framework for constructing Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes that support fault-tolerant logical transversal Z-rotations. Using this framework, we obtain asymptotically good CSS codes that fault-tolerantly realize the logical transversal Clifford group (i.e., transversal single-qubit Clifford gates are realized within a single code block, while transversal two-qubit Clifford gates are realized across two identical code blocks). Furthermore, investigating CSS-T codes, we: (a) demonstrate asymptotically good CSS-T codes wherein the transversal T realizes the logical transversal S†; (b) show that the condition C2∗C1⊆C1⊥ is necessary but not sufficient for CSS-T codes; and (c) revise the characterizations of CSS-T codes wherein the transversal T implements the logical identity and the logical transversal T, respectively.