Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold
Creators: name: Acharya, Rajeev
name: Aghababaie-Beni, Laleh
name: Aleiner, Igor
name: Andersen, Trond I.
name: Ansmann, Markus
name: Arute, Frank
name: Arya, Kunal
name: Asfaw, Abraham
name: Astrakhantsev, Nikita
name: Atalaya, Juan
name: Babbush, Ryan
name: Bacon, Dave
name: Ballard, Brian
name: Bardin, Joseph C.
name: Bausch, Johannes
name: Bengtsson, Andreas
name: Bilmes, Alexander
name: Blackwell, Sam
name: Boixo, Sergio
name: Bortoli, Gina
name: Bourassa, Alexandre
name: Bovaird, Jenna
name: Brill, Leon
name: Broughton, Michael
name: Browne, David A.
name: Buchea, Brett
name: Buckley, Bob B.
name: Buell, David A.
name: Burger, Tim
name: Burkett, Brian
name: Bushnell, Nicholas
name: Cabrera, Anthony
name: Campero, Juan
name: Chang, Hung-Shen
name: Chen, Yu
name: Chen, Zijun
name: Chiaro, Ben
name: Chik, Desmond
name: Chou, Charina
name: Claes, Jahan
name: Cleland, Agnetta Y.
name: Cogan, Josh
name: Collins, Roberto
name: Conner, Paul
name: Courtney, William
name: Crook, Alexander L.
name: Curtin, Ben
name: Das, Sayan
name: Davies, Alex
name: De Lorenzo, Laura
name: Debroy, Dripto M.
name: Demura, Sean
name: Devoret, Michel
name: Di Paolo, Agustin
name: Donohoe, Paul
name: Drozdov, Ilya
name: Dunsworth, Andrew
name: Earle, Clint
name: Edlich, Thomas
name: Eickbusch, Alec
name: Elbag, Aviv Moshe
name: Elzouka, Mahmoud
name: Erickson, Catherine
name: Faoro, Lara
name: Farhi, Edward
name: Ferreira, Vinicius S.
name: Burgos, Leslie Flores
name: Forati, Ebrahim
name: Fowler, Austin G.
name: Foxen, Brooks
name: Ganjam, Suhas
name: Garcia, Gonzalo
name: Gasca, Robert
name: Genois, Élie
name: Giang, William
name: Gidney, Craig
name: Gilboa, Dar
name: Gosula, Raja
name: Dau, Alejandro Grajales
name: Graumann, Dietrich
name: Greene, Alex
name: Gross, Jonathan A.
name: Habegger, Steve
name: Hall, John
name: Hamilton, Michael C.
name: Hansen, Monica
name: Harrigan, Matthew P.
name: Harrington, Sean D.
name: Heras, Francisco J. H.
name: Heslin, Stephen
name: Heu, Paula
name: Higgott, Oscar
name: Hill, Gordon
name: Hilton, Jeremy
name: Holland, George
name: Hong, Sabrina
name: Huang, Hsin-Yuan
name: Huff, Ashley
name: Huggins, William J.
name: Ioffe, Lev B.
name: Isakov, Sergei V.
name: Iveland, Justin
name: Jeffrey, Evan
name: Jiang, Zhang
name: Jones, Cody
name: Jordan, Stephen
name: Joshi, Chaitali
name: Juhas, Pavol
name: Kafri, Dvir
name: Kang, Hui
name: Karamlou, Amir H.
name: Kechedzhi, Kostyantyn
name: Kelly, Julian
name: Khaire, Trupti
name: Khattar, Tanuj
name: Khezri, Mostafa
name: Kim, Seon
name: Klimov, Paul V.
name: Klots, Andrey R.
name: Kobrin, Bryce
name: Kohli, Pushmeet
name: Korotkov, Alexander N.
name: Kostritsa, Fedor
name: Kothari, Robin
name: Kozlovskii, Borislav
name: Kreikebaum, John Mark
name: Kurilovich, Vladislav D.
name: Lacroix, Nathan
name: Landhuis, David
name: Lange-Dei, Tiano
name: Langley, Brandon W.
name: Laptev, Pavel
name: Lau, Kim-Ming
name: Guevel, Loïck Le
name: Ledford, Justin
name: Lee, Kenny
name: Lensky, Yuri D.
name: Leon, Shannon
name: Lester, Brian J.
name: Li, Wing Yan
name: Li, Yin
name: Lill, Alexander T.
name: Liu, Wayne
name: Livingston, William P.
name: Locharla, Aditya
name: Lucero, Erik
name: Lundahl, Daniel
name: Lunt, Aaron
name: Madhuk, Sid
name: Malone, Fionn D.
name: Maloney, Ashley
name: Mandrá, Salvatore
name: Martin, Leigh S.
name: Martin, Steven
name: Martin, Orion
name: Maxfield, Cameron
name: McClean, Jarrod R.
name: McEwen, Matt
name: Meeks, Seneca
name: Megrant, Anthony
name: Mi, Xiao
name: Miao, Kevin C.
name: Mieszala, Amanda
name: Molavi, Reza
name: Molina, Sebastian
name: Montazeri, Shirin
name: Morvan, Alexis
name: Movassagh, Ramis
name: Mruczkiewicz, Wojciech
name: Naaman, Ofer
name: Neeley, Matthew
name: Neill, Charles
name: Nersisyan, Ani
name: Neven, Hartmut
name: Newman, Michael
name: Ng, Jiun How
name: Nguyen, Anthony
name: Nguyen, Murray
name: Ni, Chia-Hung
name: O'Brien, Thomas E.
name: Oliver, William D.
name: Opremcak, Alex
name: Ottosson, Kristoffer
name: Petukhov, Andre
name: Pizzuto, Alex
name: Platt, John
name: Potter, Rebecca
name: Pritchard, Orion
name: Pryadko, Leonid P.
name: Quintana, Chris
name: Ramachandran, Ganesh
name: Reagor, Matthew J.
name: Rhodes, David M.
name: Roberts, Gabrielle
name: Rosenberg, Eliott
name: Rosenfeld, Emma
name: Roushan, Pedram
name: Rubin, Nicholas C.
name: Saei, Negar
name: Sank, Daniel
name: Sankaragomathi, Kannan
name: Satzinger, Kevin J.
name: Schurkus, Henry F.
name: Schuster, Christopher
name: Senior, Andrew W.
name: Shearn, Michael J.
name: Shorter, Aaron
name: Shutty, Noah
name: Shvarts, Vladimir
name: Singh, Shraddha
name: Sivak, Volodymyr
name: Skruzny, Jindra
name: Small, Spencer
name: Smelyanskiy, Vadim
name: Smith, W. Clarke
name: Somma, Rolando D.
name: Springer, Sofia
name: Sterling, George
name: Strain, Doug
name: Suchard, Jordan
name: Szasz, Aaron
name: Sztein, Alex
name: Thor, Douglas
name: Torres, Alfredo
name: Torunbalci, M. Mert
name: Vaishnav, Abeer
name: Vargas, Justin
name: Vdovichev, Sergey
name: Vidal, Guifre
name: Villalonga, Benjamin
name: Heidweiller, Catherine Vollgraff
name: Waltman, Steven
name: Wang, Shannon X.
name: Ware, Brayden
name: Weber, Kate
name: White, Theodore
name: Wong, Kristi
name: Woo, Bryan W. K.
name: Xing, Cheng
name: Yao, Z. Jamie
name: Yeh, Ping
name: Ying, Bicheng
name: Yoo, Juhwan
name: Yosri, Noureldin
name: Young, Grayson
name: Zalcman, Adam
name: Zhang, Yaxing
name: Zhu, Ningfeng
name: Zobrist, Nicholas
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: Quantum error correction provides a path to reach practical quantum computing by combining multiple physical qubits into a logical qubit, where the logical error rate is suppressed exponentially as more qubits are added. However, this exponential suppression only occurs if the physical error rate is below a critical threshold. In this work, we present two surface code memories operating below this threshold: a distance-7 code and a distance-5 code integrated with a real-time decoder. The logical error rate of our larger quantum memory is suppressed by a factor of $Λ$ = 2.14 $\pm$ 0.02 when increasing the code distance by two, culminating in a 101-qubit distance-7 code with 0.143% $\pm$ 0.003% error per cycle of error correction. This logical memory is also beyond break-even, exceeding its best physical qubit's lifetime by a factor of 2.4 $\pm$ 0.3. We maintain below-threshold performance when decoding in real time, achieving an average decoder latency of 63 $μ$s at distance-5 up to a million cycles, with a cycle time of 1.1 $μ$s. To probe the limits of our error-correction performance, we run repetition codes up to distance-29 and find that logical performance is limited by rare correlated error events occurring approximately once every hour, or 3 $\times$ 10$^9$ cycles. Our results present device performance that, if scaled, could realize the operational requirements of large scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.
description: 10 pages, 4 figures, Supplementary Information