Achieving computational gains with quantum error-correction primitives: Generation of long-range entanglement enhanced by error detection

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying quantum error correction primitives without logical encoding can significantly improve quantum gate fidelity and entanglement generation on superconducting processors, with modest overhead and practical benefits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel protocol for long-range CNOT gates using GHZ states and error detection, achieving high fidelity and large-scale entanglement without full logical encoding.

Findings

Achieved over 85% gate fidelity across 40 sites

Generated a 75-qubit GHZ state with low discard fraction

Demonstrated practical benefits of QEC primitives on current devices

Abstract

The resource overhead required to achieve net computational benefits from quantum error correction (QEC) limits its utility while current systems remain constrained in size, despite exceptional progress in experimental demonstrations. In this paper, we demonstrate that the strategic application of QEC primitives without logical encoding can yield significant advantages on superconducting processors--relative to any alternative error-reduction strategy--while only requiring a modest overhead. We first present a novel protocol for implementing long-range CNOT gates that relies on a unitarily prepared Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state as well as a unitary disentangling step; the protocol natively introduces an error-detection process using the disentangled qubits as flags. We demonstrate that it achieves state-of-the-art gate fidelities of over 85% across up to 40 lattice sites, significantly and consistently outperforming the best alternative measurement-based protocol without introducing any additional ancilla qubits. We then apply sparse stabilizer measurements to generate large GHZ states by detecting bit-flip and amplitude-damping errors. Employing this technique in combination with deterministic error suppression, we generate a 75-qubit GHZ state exhibiting genuine multipartite entanglement, the largest reported to date. The generation requires no more than 9 ancilla qubits and the fraction of samples discarded due to errors grows no higher than 78%, far lower than previous discard fractions required for tests using comparable numbers of fully encoded qubits. This work in total represents compelling evidence that adopting QEC primitives on current-generation devices can deliver substantial net benefits.