Topological code Autotune

TL;DR

This paper introduces Autotune, a tool that automatically optimizes topological quantum error correction, significantly improving error tolerance and facilitating realistic hardware simulations in quantum computing.

Contribution

Autotune automates the classical processing optimization for topological quantum error correction, outperforming unoptimized schemes and enabling precise hardware-level studies.

Findings

Autotune achieves extreme outperformance over unoptimized TQEC.

It enables realistic, physics-based error modeling for quantum hardware.

The tool simplifies the optimization process for quantum error correction.

Abstract

Many quantum systems are being investigated in the hope of building a large-scale quantum computer. All of these systems suffer from decoherence, resulting in errors during the execution of quantum gates. Quantum error correction enables reliable quantum computation given unreliable hardware. Unoptimized topological quantum error correction (TQEC), while still effective, performs very suboptimally, especially at low error rates. Hand optimizing the classical processing associated with a TQEC scheme for a specific system to achieve better error tolerance can be extremely laborious. We describe a tool Autotune capable of performing this optimization automatically, and give two highly distinct examples of its use and extreme outperformance of unoptimized TQEC. Autotune is designed to facilitate the precise study of real hardware running TQEC with every quantum gate having a realistic, physics-based error model.