Demonstrating quantum error mitigation on logical qubits
arXiv:2501.09079 · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-67768-4
Abstract
A long-standing challenge in quantum computing is developing technologies to overcome the inevitable noise in qubits. To enable meaningful applications in the early stages of fault-tolerant quantum computing, devising methods to suppress post-correction logical failures is becoming increasingly crucial. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate the application of zero-noise extrapolation, a practical quantum error mitigation technique, to error correction circuits on state-of-the-art superconducting processors. By amplifying the noise on physical qubits, the circuits yield outcomes that exhibit a predictable dependence on noise strength, following a polynomial function determined by the code distance. This property enables the effective application of polynomial extrapolation to mitigate logical errors. Our experiments demonstrate a universal reduction in logical errors across various quantum circuits, including fault-tolerant circuits of repetition and surface codes. We observe a favorable performance in multi-round error correction circuits, indicating that this method remains effective when the circuit depth increases. These results advance the frontier of quantum error suppression technologies, opening a practical way to achieve reliable quantum computing in the early fault-tolerant era.
References in corpus (29)
- Quantum Computing in the NISQ era and beyond
- Surface codes: Towards practical large-scale quantum computation
- Topological quantum memory
- Error mitigation for short-depth quantum circuits
- Quantum Error Correction for Quantum Memories
- Extending the computational reach of a noisy superconducting quantum processor
- Quantum Error Correction for Beginners
- Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold
- Quantum Error Mitigation
- Realization of Three-Qubit Quantum Error Correction with Superconducting Circuits
- Surface code quantum computing by lattice surgery
- Experimental Quantum Error Correction
- High-threshold and low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum memory
- Stim: a fast stabilizer circuit simulator
- Realization of an Error-Correcting Surface Code with Superconducting Qubits
- Quantum certification and benchmarking
- Quantum Low-Density Parity-Check Codes
- Probabilistic error cancellation with sparse Pauli-Lindblad models on noisy quantum processors
- Fundamental limits of quantum error mitigation
- Resource Efficient Zero Noise Extrapolation with Identity Insertions
- Quantum error mitigation as a universal error-minimization technique: applications from NISQ to FTQC eras
- Digital simulation of non-Abelian anyons with 68 programmable superconducting qubits
- Purification-based quantum error mitigation of pair-correlated electron simulations
- Universal Sampling Lower Bounds for Quantum Error Mitigation
- Quantum advantages for Pauli channel estimation
- Universal cost bound of quantum error mitigation based on quantum estimation theory
- Simulation of rare events in quantum error correction
- Demonstration of sufficient control for two rounds of quantum error correction in a solid state ensemble quantum information processor
- Zero noise extrapolation on logical qubits by scaling the error correction code distance