Quantum control of a cat qubit with bit-flip times exceeding ten seconds
Open accessAbstract
Quantum bits (qubits) are prone to several types of error as the result of uncontrolled interactions with their environment. Common strategies to correct these errors are based on architectures of qubits involving daunting hardware overheads1. One possible solution is to build qubits that are inherently protected against certain types of error, so the overhead required to correct the remaining errors is greatly reduced2–7. However, this strategy relies on one condition: any quantum manipulations of the qubit must not break the protection that has been so carefully engineered5,8. A type of qubit known as a cat qubit is encoded in the manifold of metastable states of a quantum dynamical system, and thereby acquires continuous and autonomous protection against bit-flips. Here, in a superconducting-circuit experiment, we implemented a cat qubit with bit-flip times exceeding 10 s. This is an improvement of four orders of magnitude over previously published cat-qubit implementations. We prepared and imaged quantum superposition states, and measured phase-flip times greater than 490 ns. Most importantly, we controlled the phase of these quantum superpositions without breaking the bit-flip protection. This experiment demonstrates the compatibility of quantum control and inherent bit-flip protection at an unprecedented level, showing the viability of these dynamical qubits for future quantum technologies. A type of qubit that has inherent resistance to bit-flip errors has been manipulated with a bit-flip time of more than 10 s without losing that error protection.
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Owing to the phase-space separation of the |±α⟩ coherent states, bit-flip error rates can be exponentially suppressed with cat size |α|^2.
“Owing to the phase-space separation of the |±α⟩ coherent states, bit-flip error rates can be exponentially suppressed with cat size ∣α∣2 (refs. 23,24,34,35).”
From Hardware-efficient quantum error correction via concatenated bosonic qubits (2025) · cites this paper as [35]
Experiments demonstrating this exploitation at the single bosonic mode level have been performed using cat codes, binomial codes and GKP codes.
“Experiments demonstrating this exploitation at the single bosonic mode level have been performed using cat codes21–23,33–35, binominal codes36 and GKP codes37–39.”
From Hardware-efficient quantum error correction via concatenated bosonic qubits (2025) · cites this paper as [35]
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“The g ex in [52] can achieve 5 MHz experimentally.”
- Authors
- Réglade, U., Bocquet, A., Gautier, R., Cohen, J., Marquet, A., Albertinale, E., Pankratova, N., Hallén, M., Rautschke, F., Sellem, L.-A., Rouchon, P., Sarlette, A., Mirrahimi, M., Campagne-Ibarcq, P., Lescanne, R., Jezouin, S., & Leghtas, Z.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Alice & Bob (France) (FR)
- École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Leghtas, Z.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2024-05-06
- Volume
- 629
- Issue
- 8013
- Pages
- 778-783
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W4396669151
- Semantic Scholar
- 124e35bae4981724cd86dbd1f2a5a7ba7d93f213
- Cited by
- 80
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 34 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 14
- FWCI
- 11.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2024-05-17)
- Open access
- green
- hal.science
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-22-PETQ-0003, France2030, ANR-22-PETQ-0006, ANR-19-QUAN-0006)
- QuantERA
- HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Quantum Information and Cryptography
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Mechanics and Applications
- Keywords
- cat qubits, quantum control, superconducting qubits, metastable states, quantum superposition, error protection, quantum error correction
- MeSH terms
- Quantum Theory, Time Factors
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