Removing leakage-induced correlated errors in superconducting quantum error correction
Open accessAbstract
Quantum computing can become scalable through error correction, but logical error rates only decrease with system size when physical errors are sufficiently uncorrelated. During computation, unused high energy levels of the qubits can become excited, creating leakage states that are long-lived and mobile. Particularly for superconducting transmon qubits, this leakage opens a path to errors that are correlated in space and time. Here, we report a reset protocol that returns a qubit to the ground state from all relevant higher level states. We test its performance with the bit-flip stabilizer code, a simplified version of the surface code for quantum error correction. We investigate the accumulation and dynamics of leakage during error correction. Using this protocol, we find lower rates of logical errors and an improved scaling and stability of error suppression with increasing qubit number. This demonstration provides a key step on the path towards scalable quantum computing.
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The rise in detection probabilities is attributed to data qubits leaking into non-computational excited states.
“We attribute this rise to data qubits leaking into non-computational excited states and anticipate that the inclusion of leakage-removal techniques on data qubits would help to mitigate this rise42,46–48.”
From Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
The 25 ms decay time constant is much larger than the typical QEC round time of 1 us.
“which is much larger than the typical QEC round time of 1 s [23, 24].”
From Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits (2022) · cites this paper as [24]
The results provide a natural explanation for the observations of short periods of significantly elevated error found in recent experiments with stabilizer codes.
“Our results provide a natural explanation for the observations of short periods of signi cantly elevated error found in recent experiments with stabilizer codes [23, 24].”
From Resolving catastrophic error bursts from cosmic rays in large arrays of superconducting qubits (2022) · cites this paper as [24]
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- Authors
- McEwen, M., Kafri, D., Chen, Z., Atalaya, J., Satzinger, K. J., Quintana, C., Klimov, P. V., Sank, D., Gidney, C., Fowler, A. G., Arute, F., Arya, K., Buckley, B., Burkett, B., Bushnell, N., Chiaro, B., Collins, R., Demura, S., Dunsworth, A., Erickson, C., Foxen, B., Giustina, M., Huang, T., Hong, S., Jeffrey, E., Kim, S., Kechedzhi, K., Kostritsa, F., Laptev, P., Megrant, A., Mi, X., Mutus, J., Naaman, O., Neeley, M., Neill, C., Niu, M., Paler, A., Redd, N., Roushan, P., White, T. C., Yao, J., Yeh, P., Zalcman, A., Chen, Y., Smelyanskiy, V. N., Martinis, J. M., Neven, H., Kelly, J., Korotkov, A. N., Petukhov, A. G., & Barends, R.
- Affiliations
- Google (United States) (US)
- Johannes Kepler University of Linz (AT)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- University of California, Riverside (US)
- Corresponding author
- Barends, R.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2021-03-19
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1761-1761
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7979694
- OpenAlex
- W3128237057
- Cited by
- 129
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 11
- FWCI
- 5.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Quantum Information and Cryptography
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Mechanics and Applications
- Keywords
- quantum error correction, correlated errors, transmon qubits, surface code, logical error rate, qubit scalability, error suppression
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