Researchers at Riverlane have developed a method to reduce errors in quantum computing, a significant hurdle in the field. Their work involves constructing an error-correcting experiment for simulating the hydrogen molecule, providing insights on how to make early fault-tolerant quantum computing useful. The research, published in Physical Review Research, is a step towards solving quantum error correction across multiple qubit types. The team transformed an error-prone quantum application into a fault-tolerant set of instructions, bridging the gap between current quantum devices and future fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Quantum Computing: Overcoming Error Challenges
Quantum computing holds the potential to solve complex problems significantly faster than conventional computers. However, the current quantum devices are significantly limited by noise, which leads to errors. Quantum error correction is a set of techniques that can help reduce this noise, but there is a significant gap between what is achievable on current quantum hardware and what many applications require.
A recent study by Riverlane researchers has made strides in bridging this gap. The team has transformed a previously error-prone quantum application into a fault-tolerant set of instructions, providing key insights on how to make early fault-tolerant quantum computing useful. The research, published in Physical Review Research, is another step towards solving quantum error correction across multiple qubit types.
The Quantum Error Problem
Today’s quantum computers make approximately one error every few hundred quantum operations. To unlock the full potential of quantum computing, billions of reliable quantum operations, or quantum gates, will be required. As a result, addressing errors is a critical issue in quantum computing.
Quantum error correction can solve this problem. If successful, it will unlock fault-tolerant quantum computers, which help prevent errors from spreading during the error correction process or during a computation. Error-correcting codes, which encode many noisy physical qubits to represent a smaller number of much less noisy logical qubits, are a vital piece of this puzzle.
Quantum Error Correction: Near-Term Applications
The Riverlane study focuses on what can be done in the near-term to help researchers understand how to run the first applications on early error-corrected quantum computers. The team transformed a previously error-prone quantum circuit into a fault-tolerant set of instructions.
This work bridges the gap between today’s quantum memory experiments and future fault-tolerant quantum computers, providing scientists with the key to understand and unlock near-term applications. It pushes us forward to useful quantum computing, allowing quantum scientists to devise error correction experiments beyond quantum memory.
Quantum Memory and Beyond
Quantum memory experiments aim to preserve the quantum state without making any changes to that state. While Riverlane’s current decoder (DD1) enables quantum memory demonstrations, its application to real-world use cases is extremely limited.
The latest work provides a quantum error correction benchmark which is more complex than quantum memory but less complex than other large-scale applications. The project took a quantum circuit developed for estimating the ground state of the hydrogen molecule (H2) and translated it into a fault-tolerant instruction set.
The Significance of H2
H2 is one of the simplest molecules to simulate, but implementing this simulation on a quantum error-correcting code requires all the building blocks needed to implement larger applications. It is a useful benchmark to ensure future error-corrected quantum computers are functioning properly and will help scientists to unlock large-scale applications, faster.
Developing a tool which can translate from logical circuits to a fault-tolerant instruction set will help automate what would otherwise be a significant manual effort. It allows researchers to profile the error-corrected version of a quantum circuit, helping us understand what steps need to be optimised and identify potential unit tests for hardware companies. This work gives us an idea of which operations are particularly important when implementing a quantum circuit in a fault-tolerant way.
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