Individual quantum bits are so fragile that stray thermal vibrations destroy calculations in microseconds; surface-code error correction clusters dozens of noisy physical qubits into a single indestructible logical qubit. By proving that adding more qubits suppresses overall computational error rates, quantum physicists have crossed the historic fault-tolerance threshold.
For thirty years, the promise of quantum computers simulating complex medicines and cracking modern encryption was held back by extreme physical fragility. Individual quantum bits are so sensitive to environmental heat that a tiny vibration ruins the entire mathematical calculation in milliseconds.
Quantum engineers broke through this barrier by grouping dozens of fragile physical qubits into a single "logical" quantum bit. Much like a chorus singing in unison can drown out an off-key singer, the surface-code network continuously spots and repairs individual qubit errors before they can corrupt the calculation.
This breakthrough crosses the fault-tolerance threshold for quantum hardware. By reducing overall error rates as more qubits are added, by enabling deep mathematical simulations of room-temperature superconductors, and by laying the engineering foundation for commercial quantum supercomputers, quantum error correction unlocks computing’s next frontier.
Improved quantum processor logical error rates via correction and detection
Performing quantum algorithms for critical problems in physics and chemistry requires substantially lower error rates than the physical error rates of present quantum computers. Achieving such low logical error rates requires quantum error correction and physical error rates below a critical threshold value. We experimentally demonstrate on a trapped-ion quantum charge-coupled device (QCCD) improvements in logical error rates ranging from 11× to 800× compared with several physical circuit baselines, including quantum computation on multiple qubits. Our results hinge on two quantum error correction code constructions optimized for an ion-trap processor: a 12-qubit code encoding two qubits inspired by Knill and a 16-qubit tesseract colour code encoding four qubits. These constructions are combined with a scalable method of error detection and post-selection to achieve reduced logical error rates. Our results show that state-of-the-art quantum devices are already able to make use of fault tolerance and error correction to strongly suppress errors in non-trivial quantum circuit computations.
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