Protecting a bosonic qubit with autonomous quantum error correction

Jeffrey M. Gertler, Brian Baker, Juliang Li, Shruti Shirol, Jens Koch and Chen Wang ()
Additional contact information
Jeffrey M. Gertler: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Brian Baker: Northwestern University
Juliang Li: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Shruti Shirol: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jens Koch: Northwestern University
Chen Wang: University of Massachusetts Amherst

Nature, 2021, vol. 590, issue 7845, 243-248

Abstract: Abstract To build a universal quantum computer from fragile physical qubits, effective implementation of quantum error correction (QEC)1 is an essential requirement and a central challenge. Existing demonstrations of QEC are based on an active schedule of error-syndrome measurements and adaptive recovery operations2,3,4,5,6,7 that are hardware intensive and prone to introducing and propagating errors. In principle, QEC can be realized autonomously and continuously by tailoring dissipation within the quantum system1,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, but so far it has remained challenging to achieve the specific form of dissipation required to counter the most prominent errors in a physical platform. Here we encode a logical qubit in Schrödinger cat-like multiphoton states15 of a superconducting cavity, and demonstrate a corrective dissipation process that stabilizes an error-syndrome operator: the photon number parity. Implemented with continuous-wave control fields only, this passive protocol protects the quantum information by autonomously correcting single-photon-loss errors and boosts the coherence time of the bosonic qubit by over a factor of two. Notably, QEC is realized in a modest hardware setup with neither high-fidelity readout nor fast digital feedback, in contrast to the technological sophistication required for prior QEC demonstrations. Compatible with additional phase-stabilization and fault-tolerant techniques16,17,18, our experiment suggests quantum dissipation engineering as a resource-efficient alternative or supplement to active QEC in future quantum computing architectures.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03257-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:590:y:2021:i:7845:d:10.1038_s41586-021-03257-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03257-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().