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Cambridge Researchers at Honeywell Quantum Solutions have turned problematic micromotion that jostles trapped ion qubits out of position into a plus.

The team recently demonstrated a technique that uses micromotion to shield nearby ions from stray photons released during mid-circuit measurement, a procedure in which lasers are used to check the quantum state of certain qubits and then reset them.

Mid-circuit measurement is a key capability in today’s early-stage quantum computers. Because the qubit’s state can be checked and then re-used, researchers can run more complex algorithms – such as the holoQUADS algorithm – with fewer qubits.

By “hiding” ions behind micromotion, Honeywell researchers significantly reduced the amount of “crosstalk” – errors caused by photons hitting neighboring qubits – that occurred when measuring qubits during an operation. (Details are available in a pre-print publication available on the arXiv.)

“We were able to reduce crosstalk by an order of magnitude,” said Dr. John Gaebler, Chief Scientist of Commercial Products at Honeywell Quantum Solutions, and lead author of the paper. “It is a significant reduction in crosstalk errors. Much more so than other methods we’ve used.”

The new technique represents another step toward reducing errors that occur in today’s trapped-ion quantum computers, which is necessary if the technology is to solve problems too complex for classical systems.

“For quantum computers to scale, we need to reduce errors throughout the system,” said Tony Uttley, President of Honeywell Quantum Solutions. “The new technique the Honeywell team developed will help us get there.”

Eliminating errors

Today’s quantum computing technologies are still in the early stage and are prone to “noise” - or interference - caused by qubits interacting with their environment and one another.

This noise causes errors to accumulate, corrupts information stored in and between physical qubits, and disrupts the quantum state in which qubits must exist to run calculations. (Scientists call this decoherence.)

Researchers are trying to eliminate or suppress as many of these errors as possible while also creating logical qubits, a collection of entangled physical qubits on which quantum information is distributed, stored, and protected.

By creating logical qubits, scientists can apply mathematical codes to detect and correct errors and eliminate noise as calculations are running. This multi-step process is known as quantum error correction (QEC). Honeywell researchers recently demonstrated they can detect and correct errors in real-time by applying multiple rounds of full cycles of quantum error correction.

Logical qubits and QEC are important elements to improving the accuracy and precision of quantum computers. But, Gaebler said, those methods are not enough on their own.

“Everything has to be working at a certain level before QEC can take you the rest of the way,” he said. “The more we can suppress or eliminate errors in the overall system, the more effective QEC will be and the fewer qubits we need to run complex calculations.”

Cutting out crosstalk

In classical computing, bit flip errors occur when a binary digit, or bit, inadvertently switches from a zero to one or vice versa. Quantum computers experience a similar bit flip error as well as phase flip errors. Both errors cause qubits to lose their quantum state – or to decohere. In trapped ion quantum computing, one source of errors comes from the lasers used to implement gate operations and qubit measurements.

Though these lasers are highly controlled, unruly photons (small packets of light) still escape and bounce into neighboring ions causing “crosstalk” and decoherence.

Researchers use a variety of methods to protect these ions from crosstalk, especially during mid-circuit measurement where only a single qubit or a small subset of qubits is meant to be measured. With its quantum charged-coupled device (QCCD) architecture, the Honeywell team takes the approach of moving neighboring ions away from the qubit being fluoresced by a laser. But there is limited space along the device, which becomes even more compact as more qubits are added.

“Even when we move them more than 100 microns away, we still get more crosstalk than we prefer,” said Dr. Charlie Baldwin, a senior advanced physicist and co-author of the paper. “There is still some scattered light from the detection laser.”

The team hit on hiding neighboring ions from stray photons using micromotion potentials, which are caused by the oscillating electric fields used to “trap” these charged atoms. Micromotion is typically thought of as a nuisance with ion trapping, causing the ions to rapidly oscillate back and forth, and occurs when the ions are pushed out of the center of the trap by additional electric fields.

“Usually, we are trying to eliminate micromotion but in this case, we were able to use it to our benefit,” said Dr. Patty Lee, chief scientist at Honeywell Quantum Solutions.

The team’s goal is to reduce by 10 million the probability of a neighboring ion absorbing photons at 110 microns away. By moving neighboring ions and hiding them behind micromotion the Honeywell team is approaching that mark.

How and why the technique works

In their paper, Honeywell researchers delved into how and why hiding ions with micromotion works, including the ideal frequency of the oscillations. They also identified and characterized errors. (The basic physics behind the concept of hiding ions was first explored by the ion storage group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.)

“Mid-circuit operations are a new feature in commercial quantum computing hardware, so we had to invent a new way to validate that the micromotion hiding technique was achieving the low level of crosstalk errors that we predicted,” said Dr. Charlie Baldwin.

Though the new method resulted in a significant reduction of crosstalk errors, the Honeywell team acknowledged there is further to go.

“Crosstalk is one of those scary errors for scaling,” Gaebler said. “It has to be controlled because it becomes more of a problem as you scale and add qubits. This is another tool that will help us scale and help us compact our systems and pack in as many qubits as we can.”

Cambridge Researchers at Honeywell Quantum Solutions have taken a significant step toward demonstrating the viability of large-scale quantum computing on its trapped-ion quantum computing technology. 

The Honeywell team can now perform quantum error correction (QEC), which are protocols necessary to detect and correct errors in real time on a quantum computer. They demonstrated the ability to “protect” quantum information (prevent a quantum computation from being quickly corrupted by imperfections and noise) on the System Model H1. This is an important first in the quantum computing industry. Currently, most demonstrations of quantum error correction involve correcting errors or “noise” after the procedure has finished running, a technique known as post-processing.

In a , researchers detailed how they created a single logical qubit (a series of entangled physical qubits) and applied multiple rounds of quantum error correction. This logical qubit is protected from two main types of errors that occur in a quantum computer: bit flips and phase flips.

Previously, groups have looked at codes that only are capable of correcting a single type of error (bit or phase but not both) {Google, IBM/Raytheon, IBM/Basel}. Others have looked at quantum error detecting codes, which can detect both types of errors but not correct them {ETH, Google, Delft}. Further still, groups have demonstrated pieces of the quantum error correcting process {Blatt, Monroe}. 

“All of today’s quantum technologies are at an early stage where they must combat errors that accumulate during computations,” said Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions. “What the Honeywell team accomplished is groundbreaking. It proves what was once only theoretical, that quantum computers will be able to correct errors in real time, paving the way for precise quantum computations.”

Though the achievement represents progress toward large-scale quantum computing, Honeywell researchers are still working to cross the break-even point at which the logical error rate is less than the physical error rate. 

The need for logical qubits

To appreciate this achievement, it is important to understand how difficult it is to detect and then correct a quantum error.

Quantum bits, or qubits, are fragile and finicky. They pick up interference or “noise” from their environment. This noise causes errors to accumulate and corrupts information stored in and between physical qubits. Scientists call this decoherence.

Attempts to directly detect and correct errors on a physical qubit also corrupts its “quantumness.” And cloning this data, a method used in classical computing that involves making multiple exact copies of the information, does not work in quantum (as prohibited by “The No Cloning Theorem”.)

To overcome these concerns, several scientists, most notably Peter Shor, Robert Calberbank, and Andrew Steane, found a way around this, at least in theory, after studying how quickly qubits experience decoherence.

They demonstrated that by storing information in a collection of entangled qubits, it was possible to detect and correct errors without disrupting quantum information. They called this assortment of entangled qubits a logical qubit. 

Scientists have spent years developing codes and methods that could be applied to logical qubits to protect quantum information from errors.

What’s next

The next step is to break even, crossing the point at which the logical qubit error rate is lower than the error rate for physical qubits. (Creating logical qubits and applying quantum error correction codes also can inject noise into a system).

The Honeywell team is closing in on that mark. To definitively demonstrate passing the break-even point, the error rate per QEC cycle needs to be lower than the largest physical error rate associated with the QEC protocol. 

“In the technical paper, we point to key improvements we need to make to reach the break-even point,” said Dr. Ciaran Ryan-Anderson, an advanced physicist and lead author of the paper. “We believe these improvements are feasible and are pushing to accomplish this next step.”

From there, the goal is to create multiple logical qubits, which depending on the quantum technology, requires better fidelities, more physical qubits, better connectivity between qubits, and other factors.

An increase in logical qubits will usher in a new era of fault-tolerant quantum computers that can continue to function even when some operations fail. (Fault tolerance is a design principle that prevents errors from cascading throughout a system and corrupting circuits.)

“The big, enterprise-level problems we want to solve with quantum computers require precision and we need error-corrected logical qubits to scale successfully,” Uttley said.