Magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental implementation of magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor, significantly reducing error rates and achieving high-fidelity magic states, thus advancing fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental validation of magic state cultivation with integrated code-switching and fault-tolerant measurement protocols on a superconducting platform.

Findings

Error reduced by a factor of 40

Achieved magic state fidelity of 0.9999(1)

Retained 8% of cultivation attempts

Abstract

Fault-tolerant quantum computing requires a universal gate set, but the necessary non-Clifford gates represent a significant resource cost for most quantum error correction architectures. Magic state cultivation offers an efficient alternative to resource-intensive distillation protocols; however, testing the proposal's assumptions represents a challenging departure from quantum memory experiments. We present an experimental study of magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor. We implement cultivation, including code-switching into a surface code, and develop a fault-tolerant measurement protocol to bound the magic state fidelity. Cultivation reduces the error by a factor of 40, with a state fidelity of 0.9999(1) (retaining 8% of attempts). Our results experimentally establish magic state cultivation as a viable solution to one of quantum computing's most significant challenges.