40x fewer errors: Google tests a new way to make quantum 'magic states'
On its Willow chip, Google prepared special quantum states and checked them over and over, keeping only the good ones.
Quantum computers make many mistakes. Google found a way to prepare an important ingredient with far fewer mistakes. It is still a lab test, and a useful quantum computer is far away.
Hype check
Louder than it deserves. The real change is smaller.
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Why it matters
Quantum computers need these states for many useful tasks. Making them cleanly is one of the hard steps toward a working machine.
Skip: nothing changes for you. It is research, years from a product.
The details
- 'Magic states' is a technical name for a kind of quantum state needed for some quantum operations; it is not a trick.
- Google's method, called cultivation, prepares one state and checks it repeatedly, then discards failures.
- Errors in preparing the states fell about 40 times compared with no cultivation.
- The states reached 99.99% logical fidelity; in the strictest runs about 92% of attempts were discarded.
- Moving the states into a larger error-correcting code added errors, so this is not yet a full fault-tolerant computer.
Receipts
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