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Quantum computing

Efficient fault tolerance

Nature volume 540, pages 44–45 (2016)Cite this article

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Dealing with errors in a quantum computer typically requires complex programming and many additional quantum bits. A technique for controlling errors has been proposed that alleviates both of these problems.

Quantum computers have great potential for solving certain computational problems — such as simulating chemical reactions or exotic quantum materials — that seem to be intractable for regular computers. However, although the leading experiments have achieved error rates of less than one error in every 1,000 operations1, a large quantum algorithm might require millions of operations, and even a single error could result in the wrong answer. Future large-scale quantum computers will therefore need to be programmed in a 'fault-tolerant' way so that they can get the correct answer in spite of a low but non-negligible error rate. Unfortunately, existing error-correction approaches come with a major drawback: they require many additional quantum bits (qubits). Writing in Physical Review X, Yoder et al.2 propose a more efficient method for performing certain fault-tolerant quantum operations using fewer qubits than existing approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Daniel Gottesman is at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada.,

    Daniel Gottesman

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  1. Daniel Gottesman
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Correspondence to Daniel Gottesman.

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Gottesman, D. Efficient fault tolerance. Nature 540, 44–45 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20479

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