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QUANTUM GASES

Qubit readout boost

Nature Physics volume 15, pages 523–524 (2019)Cite this article

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The detection of the quantum state of tens of neutral atoms arranged in arrays has reached a new record fidelity. This brings fault-tolerant quantum computation and simulation closer to reality.

At the heart of experimental science lies the measurement process, and the more precise our measurement, the better our description of the object of interest. Although advantageous across all disciplines of science, improved measurement precision is essential to the currently worldwide ongoing quest for bringing quantum computing closer to reality. This need stems from the sensitivity of quantum computation to errors — uncontrolled twists of the quantum bits (qubits) on which the computation is built. Overcoming this issue in a scalable way is a central challenge within this field. Without the ability to precisely determine the state of the qubits, the realization of quantum computers with error correction is doomed to fail, because the measurement outcome decides the next steps in the protocol of a fault-tolerant quantum computer1. Writing in Nature Physics, Tsung-Yao Wu and colleagues have now succeeded in boosting the detection fidelity of 50 qubits made of neutral atoms trapped in three-dimensional arrays by a factor of 20, reaching 99.94%2.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the imaging technique.

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  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany

    Christian Gross

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  1. Christian Gross
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Correspondence to Christian Gross.

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Gross, C. Qubit readout boost. Nat. Phys. 15, 523–524 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0539-z

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