Google showcases way to fix quantum computer errors more efficiently

Making quantum computers error-proof is one of the biggest challenges currently facing the technology. Researchers at Google Quantum AI have now demonstrated one way to do so more efficiently. Their work suggests the smaller quantum computers that will be available in the next few years could be more impactful than expected.

Quantum computers can run mathematical operations, analogous to addition or multiplication, that conventional computers cannot. This makes them suitable for solving some problems that had previously been considered unsolvable, such as those that underpin cryptography.

Most important among the quantum operations the computers run are “non-Clifford gates”, which are the key ingredients for algorithms that transcend conventional computation.

But there is a problem. Quantum computers are very error-prone, and their building blocks, called qubits, must be encoded into special groups, or “logical qubits”, before they can execute operations reliably. Executing non-Clifford gates in an error-corrected way requires large numbers of qubits, which means having to build very large quantum computers – a formidable engineering challenge.

Now, Emma Rosenfeld at Google Quantum AI and her colleagues have used the firm’s Willow quantum computer to show that the error-correction process can be made more efficient. Their new technique ultimately reduced Willow’s errors 40 times.