Improving Performance of an Analog Electronic Device Using Quantum Error Correction

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying quantum error correction to an analog quantum device significantly enhances gate fidelity, reducing errors by over two orders of magnitude and improving overall performance.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that quantum error correction can improve the fault-tolerance of analog quantum devices, a novel application in this context.

Findings

Median fidelity of Z gate improved from 0.995 to 0.99998

Error reduction over two orders of magnitude for tested gates

Strong performance improvements observed after error correction

Abstract

The use of analog classical systems for computation is generally thought to be a difficult proposition due to the susceptibility of these devices to noise and the lack of a clear framework for achieving fault-tolerance. We present experimental results for the application of quantum error correction (QEC) techniques to a prototype analog computational device called a quantum emulation device. It is shown that for the gates tested (transversal $Z$, $X$ and $SH$) there is a marked improvement in the performance characteristics of the gate operations following error correction using the 5-Qubit Perfect code. In the case of the $Z$ gate, the median fidelity improved from 0.995 to 0.99998, a reduction in the gate error by over two orders of magnitude. Other transverse gates similarly show strong improvements.