Quantum computer experiments at UMD show that combining quantum computer pieces doesn’t have to mean combining their error rates.
Pobody’s nerfect—not even the indifferent, calculating bits that are the foundation of computers. But JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe’s group, together with colleagues from Duke University, have made progress toward ensuring we can trust the results of quantum computers even when they are built from pieces that sometimes fail. They have shown in an experiment, for the first time, that an assembly of quantum computing pieces can be better than the worst parts used to make it. In a paper published in the journal, the team shared how they took this landmark step toward reliable, practical quantum computers.
In their experiment, the researchers combined several qubits the quantum version of bits so that they functioned together as a single unit called a logical qubit. They created the logical qubit based on a quantum error correction code so that, unlike for the individual physical qubits, errors can be easily detected and corrected, and they made it to be fault-tolerant capable of containing errors to minimize their negative effects.
