Short Shor-style syndrome sequences

TL;DR

This paper introduces optimized fault-tolerant quantum error correction methods that reduce syndrome measurements, enabling faster, more efficient quantum computations with fewer resources and improved error rates.

Contribution

It presents new code-specific and general techniques for efficient error correction, including single-shot syndrome measurements and logical measurements, with significant reductions in measurement counts.

Findings

Single-shot syndrome measurement sequences use fewer measurements (e.g., 10 vs. 40)

Logical Z measurements can be performed with only 11 measurements instead of 63

Designs for fault-tolerant error correction with the 16-qubit extended Hamming code

Abstract

We optimize fault-tolerant quantum error correction to reduce the number of syndrome bit measurements. Speeding up error correction will also speed up an encoded quantum computation, and should reduce its effective error rate. We give both code-specific and general methods, using a variety of techniques and in a variety of settings. We design new quantum error-correcting codes specifically for efficient error correction, e.g., allowing single-shot error correction. For codes with multiple logical qubits, we give methods for combining error correction with partial logical measurements. There are tradeoffs in choosing a code and error-correction technique. While to date most work has concentrated on optimizing the syndrome-extraction procedure, we show that there are also substantial benefits to optimizing how the measured syndromes are chosen and used. As an example, we design single-shot measurement sequences for fault-tolerant quantum error correction with the 16-qubit extended Hamming code. Our scheme uses 10 syndrome bit measurements, compared to 40 measurements with the Shor scheme. We design single-shot logical measurements as well: any logical Z measurement can be made together with fault-tolerant error correction using only 11 measurements. For comparison, using the Shor scheme a basic implementation of such a non-destructive logical measurement uses 63 measurements. We also offer ten open problems, the solutions of which could lead to substantial improvements of fault-tolerant error correction.