Topological quantum computing with a very noisy network and local error rates approaching one percent

Journal article

A scalable quantum computer could be built by networking together many simple processor cells, thus avoiding the need to create a single complex structure. The difficulty is that realistic quantum links are very error prone. A solution is for cells to repeatedly communicate with each other and so purify any imperfections; however prior studies suggest that the cells themselves must then have prohibitively low internal error rates. Here we describe a method by which even error-prone cells can perform purification: groups of cells generate shared resource states, which then enable stabilization of topologically encoded data. Given a realistically noisy network (≥10% error rate) we find that our protocol can succeed provided that intra-cell error rates for initialisation, state manipulation and measurement are below 0.82%. This level of fidelity is already achievable in several laboratory systems.

Authors: Nickerson, N; Li, Y; Benjamin, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Journal: Nature Communications
• Volume: 4
• Article number: 1756
• Publication date: 2013-04-23
• Acceptance date: 2013-03-20
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2773
• EISSN: 2041-1723
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR