Encoding a magic state with beyond break-even fidelity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a scheme to produce high-fidelity magic states on a superconducting qubit array using error correction, outperforming individual qubit preparation and enabling more efficient fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Contribution

The authors introduce and implement a method to prepare and improve magic states via error correction and adaptive circuits, advancing fault-tolerant quantum computing capabilities.

Findings

Error correction improves magic state fidelity over individual qubits.

Adaptive circuits increase the yield of magic states.

Prototype reduces physical qubits needed for high-fidelity magic states.

Abstract

To run large-scale algorithms on a quantum computer, error-correcting codes must be able to perform a fundamental set of operations, called logic gates, while isolating the encoded information from noise~\cite{Harper2019,Ryan-Anderson2021,Egan2021fault, Chen2022calibrated, Sundaresan2022matching, ryananderson2022implementing, Postler2022demonstration, GoogleAI2023}. We can complete a universal set of logic gates by producing special resources called magic states~\cite{Bravyi2005universal,Maier2013magic, Chamberland2022building}. It is therefore important to produce high-fidelity magic states to conduct algorithms while introducing a minimal amount of noise to the computation. Here, we propose and implement a scheme to prepare a magic state on a superconducting qubit array using error correction. We find that our scheme produces better magic states than those we can prepare using the individual qubits of the device. This demonstrates a fundamental principle of fault-tolerant quantum computing~\cite{Shor96}, namely, that we can use error correction to improve the quality of logic gates with noisy qubits. Additionally, we show we can increase the yield of magic states using adaptive circuits, where circuit elements are changed depending on the outcome of mid-circuit measurements. This demonstrates an essential capability we will need for many error-correction subroutines. Our prototype will be invaluable in the future as it can reduce the number of physical qubits needed to produce high-fidelity magic states in large-scale quantum-computing architectures.