Tutorial On Surface Code Quantum Error Correction
Tutorial On Surface Code Quantum Error Correction
• Then perform the measurement circuits from the previous slide for each
measure-qubit, obtaining a sequence of syndromes
• Whatever they are, they should commute with all stabilizer operators
and it should not be possible to write the logical operators as a product
of other stabilizer operators
Logical Operators for the Surface Code (ctd.)
• X logical operator is a chain of
X operators that connect the
X boundaries
• Surface code can deal with all of these errors, as long as errors can be
identified
• Simply turn on the measure qubits (measure them) that were turned
off in order to have a logical qubit
• This is helpful for implementing a logical CNOT gate between two logical
qubits, by a braiding transformation
Moving Qubits Around the 2D Array: Example
a) Wait for current surface
code cycle to complete.
b) Then don’t measure Z-
stabilizer below Z-cut, and
turn 4-terminal X-stabilizers
acting on qubit 6 to 3-
terminal stabilizers.
Measure X of qubit 6
c) Turn on measure-Z qubit of
original Z-cut hole. Convert
X stabilizers back to 4
terminals
Multicell Move Extending One-Cell Move
• Multicell move is
performed similarly to
one cell move, and can be
completed in the same
number of steps required
for the single-cell move
discussed on the previous
slide
CNOT by Braiding (Sketch)
• Recall that CNOT in Heisenberg picture is equivalent to
transformation of Pauli operators as
X⊗I➝X⊗X
Z⊗I➝Z⊗I
I⊗X➝I⊗X
I⊗Z➝Z⊗Z
Effect of loop move around the X-cut of the upper hole of the second qubit
is equivalent to realizing a logical X for the second qubit:
X⊗I➝X⊗X
CNOT by Braiding (Sketch)
Effect of loop move for I on 1st qubit and X on 2nd has no effect on 2nd qubit:
I⊗X➝I⊗X
CNOT by Braiding (Sketch)
• Effect of loop move for I on 1st qubit and Z on 2nd affects 1st qubit:
I⊗Z➝Z⊗Z
Other Logical Operations
• There is a way to implement a CNOT between two Z double-cut
qubits, by connecting them via an X double-cut qubit
• There is a way to implement logical Hadamard on a logical qubit
• There is also a way to implement a logical T gate, by using T-magic-
state distillation and then logical CNOTs, logical measurements, and
conditional operations
• All of the above give a full set of operations for universal fault-
tolerant quantum computation, using the surface code and a
significant amount of classical control processing operating much
faster than the quantum gate times
Conclusion (taken directly from arXiv:1708.00054)
• A wide range of qubit technologies have the potential to implement a 2D
array of nearest-neighbor coupled qubits.
• Given such a 2D array, the surface code has the highest known threshold
error rate of approximately 1%.
• Experiments have yet to yield scalable devices with a set of sufficiently low
error quantum gates to implement the surface code, and other codes that
work in 2D typically have a threshold error rate an order of magnitude
lower.
• It is unclear whether gates with sufficiently low error rates to use any code
other than the surface code will ever exist.