‘Do qubits dream of quantum error correction?’ or: Error correction optimisation in the presence of X/Z asymmetry

Yo. Room 408 has a new paper on the arXiv that is here. This is the abstract.

By taking into account the physical nature of quantum errors it is possible to improve the efficiency of quantum error correction. Here we consider an optimisation to conventional quantum error correction which involves exploiting asymmetries in the rates of X and Z errors by reducing the rate of X correction. As an example, we apply this optimisation to the [[7,1,3]] code and make a comparison with conventional quantum error correction. After two levels of concatenated error correction we demonstrate that a circuit depth reduction of 100% results in a failure rate increase. This improvement requires no additional resources and the required error asymmetry is likely to be in the presence of scones and tea.

Feel free to feedbag it out in the comments section.

n-=2

Simon has left room 408. Although he wasn’t a great contributor to this blog he was a valued member of the 408 team. He has finished his work here and is now headed for Japan. Goodbye Simon, and goodluck.

Also, in an unexpected move, Mel has left room 408. Mel, who brought us the Women in Physics topic (and then lost interest), has seized a vacancy in the upstairs area – room 612. The official motive of this move is that she wants easier access to a certain individual who now resides on level 6, but there may be other nefarious purposes. An anonymous room 408 member (who isn’t me, or Simon, or Mel, or Ashley, and may or may not be Chun-Hsu) is quoted to have said “I have mixed feelings about her departure.”

Mel’s words still echo in the memories of the remaining room 408ians. “I am Mel. Can we do some work now?“

Incidentally, I once lived in room 612. — — Let’s just say that I’m not in room 612 any more and leave it at that. Goodluck Mel.

Hello David Wang

Two phat presentations from the 408 team about a week ago. The first, What can’t quantum computers do, dispelled the myth of quantum computers giving an exponential increase in speed for general computation. The second, Quantum computing with realistically noisy devices?, discussed some of the physical requirements of a quantum computer, in particular, the trade off between gate accuracy level and resource costs.

The derivation will be televised

SciVee is a new site intended to provide a platform to explain and promote published journal articles. The idea is that a researcher uploads a video – a pubcast! omgwtfbbq!!!111!!? – in which they provide a brief description of the work synchronized to text from the article. There are some examples on the site where you can see the idea in action. To make better use of the video format I suppose that you could include animations or whiteboard happenings. Currently SciVee is only for papers published in open-access biology journals, but if closed-access physics gets a channel then I would love Gottesman to show me how universal QC is possible for any stabilizer code. (Maybe someone with some spare time could construct a similar site that references the arXiv.)