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Entropy

Implementation of Fault-Tolerant Encoding Circuit Based on Stabilizer Implementation and “Flag” Bits in Steane Code

Dongxiao Quan, Chensong Liu, Xiaojie Lv, Changxing Pei

Published Aug 11, 2022• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum error correction (QEC) is an effective way to overcome quantum noise and de-coherence, meanwhile the fault tolerance of the encoding circuit, syndrome measurement circuit, and logical gate realization circuit must be ensured so as to achieve reliable quantum computing. Steane code is one of the most famous codes, proposed in 1996, however, the classical encoding circuit based on stabilizer implementation is not fault-tolerant. In this paper, we propose a method to design a fault-tolerant encoding circuit for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) code based on stabilizer implementation and “flag” bits. We use the Steane code as an example to depict in detail the fault-tolerant encoding circuit design process including the logical operation implementation, the stabilizer implementation, and the “flag” qubits design. The simulation results show that assuming only one quantum gate will be wrong with a certain probability p, the classical encoding circuit will have logic errors proportional to p; our proposed circuit is fault-tolerant as with the help of the “flag” bits, all types of errors in the encoding process can be accurately and uniquely determined, the errors can be fixed. If all the gates will be wrong with a certain probability p, which is the actual situation, the proposed encoding circuit will also be wrong with a certain probability, but its error rate has been reduced greatly from p to p2 compared with the original circuit. This encoding circuit design process can be extended to other CSS codes to improve the correctness of the encoding circuit.

DOI
10.3390/e24081107

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Quantum error correction (QEC) is an effective way to overcome quantum noise and de-coherence, meanwhile the fault tolerance of the encoding circuit, syndrome measurement circuit, and logical gate realization circuit must be ensured so as to achieve reliable quantum computing. Steane code is one of the most famous codes, proposed in 1996, however, the classical encoding circuit based on stabilizer implementation is not fault-tolerant. In this paper, we propose a method to design a fault-tolerant encoding circuit for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) code based on stabilizer implementation and “flag” bits. We use the Steane code as an example to depict in detail the fault-tolerant encoding circuit design process including the logical operation implementation, the stabilizer implementation, and the “flag” qubits design. The simulation results show that assuming only one quantum gate will be wrong with a certain probability p, the classical encoding circuit will have logic errors proportional to p; our proposed circuit is fault-tolerant as with the help of the “flag” bits, all types of errors in the encoding process can be accurately and uniquely determined, the errors can be fixed. If all the gates will be wrong with a certain probability p, which is the actual situation, the proposed encoding circuit will also be wrong with a certain probability, but its error rate has been reduced greatly from p to p2 compared with the original circuit. This encoding circuit design process can be extended to other CSS codes to improve the correctness of the encoding circuit.
Since quantum states are limited in their ease of manipulation, quantum computing has great advantages when used for computation. These interactions, even if infinitesimal, are the very reason why errors arise, be it bit-flip, phase-flip, or composite, thus diminishing the accuracy in computation. Quantum error correction (QEC) intervenes systematically to guard against the loss of coherence from quantum information. Amongst the various QEC protocols developed so far, Steane code [ [7], [1], [3]] is a very famous CSS stabilizer code that was derived from a classical Hamming code. It will encode a single logical qubit into seven physical qubits, which corrects all single-qubit errors by separating X and Z syndrome measurements. The Steane code enables the implementation of transversal Clifford gates, making it an ideal playground to study fault-tolerant quantum computation. Although surface codes remain the codes of choice for scaling implementations, the Steane code will forever remain one of the cornerstone codes due to its clear structure of error correction and ease in teaching.
We propose fault-tolerant quantum encoders for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) and non-CSS codes over qudits by utilizing ggg-partite maximally entangled states. The qudits are grouped into ggg contiguous blocks such that entangled states are shared across the blocks, and multiqudit gates are applied locally to restrict the error propagation within each block. We also propose a transversal fault-tolerant block decoder to decode the blocks individually and recover the complete encoded quantum information. The optimum value of ggg to obtain an improvement in the probability of error propagation of the proposed encoders against non-fault-tolerant schemes is analytically determined for application in the encoding circuit. The proposed fault-tolerant scheme with entanglement assistance scales linearly with the number of ggg-partite entangled states and overcomes the limitations of diminishing coding rates for higher levels of concatenation within the concatenated coding scheme. We validate the proposed ideas by constructing fault-tolerant encoding circuits for the non-CSS [[5,1,3]]3{[[5,1,3]]}_{3}[[5,1,3]]3​ code and the [[7,1,3]]3{[[7,1,3]]}_{3}[[7,1,3]]3​ CSS code through illustrative examples. We reduced the probability of error propagation from 0.248 to 0.212 for the [[5,1,3]]3{[[5,1,3]]}_{3}[[5,1,3]]3​ code and from 0.207 to 0.174 for the [[7,1,3]]3{[[7,1,3]]}_{3}[[7,1,3]]3​ code. For example, over [[100,70]]2{[[100,70]]}_{2}[[100,70]]2​ quantum code without any fault tolerance, using three-partite entangled pairs, one can get two orders of improvement (1e-2) in the probability of error propagation compared to the non-fault-tolerant encoder by encoding over 190 physical qubits with the same number of stabilizers.
Encoding information redundantly using quantum error-correcting (QEC) codes allows one to overcome the inherent sensitivity to noise in quantum computers to ultimately achieve large-scale quantum computation. The Steane QEC method involves preparing an auxiliary logical qubit of the same QEC code as used for the data register. The data and auxiliary registers are then coupled with a logical controlled- () gate, enabling a measurement of the auxiliary register to reveal the error syndrome. This study presents the implementation of multiple rounds of fault-tolerant (FT) Steane QEC on a trapped-ion quantum computer. Various QEC codes are employed and the results are compared to a previous experimental approach utilizing flag qubits. Our experimental findings show improved logical fidelities for Steane QEC and accompanying numerical simulations indicate an even larger performance advantage for quantum processors limited by entangling-gate errors. This establishes experimental Steane QEC as a competitive paradigm for FT quantum computing. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
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.
Recently, the circular connectivity pattern has been presented for a class of stabilizer quantum error correction codes. The circular connectivity pattern for such a class of stabilizer codes can be implemented in a resource-efficient manner using a single ancilla and native two-qubit Controlled-Not-Swap gates (CNS) gates, which may be interesting for demonstrating error-correction codes with superconducting quantum processors. However, one concern is that this scheme is not fault-tolerant. And it might not apply to the Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes. In this paper, we present a fault-tolerant version of the circular connectivity pattern, named the double-circular connectivity pattern. This pattern is an implementation for syndrome-measurement circuits with a flagged error correction scheme for stabilizer codes. We illustrate that this pattern is available for Steane code (a CSS code), Laflamme’s five-qubit code, and Shor’s nine-qubit code. For Laflamme’s five-qubit code and Shor’s nine-qubit code, the pattern has the property that it uses only native two-qubit CNS gates, which are more efficient in the superconducting quantum platform.
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]][[5, 1, 3]][[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.