Alice & Bob, a leader in fault-tolerant quantum computing, has announced a significant advancement in cat qubit technology, achieving a 160x improvement in bit-flip error protection through a technique called “squeezing.” This innovation, detailed in a recent preprint, optimizes error suppression by compressing the quantum state of cat qubits, reducing the need for resource-intensive error correction.
Cat qubits, a type of superconducting qubit, are designed to minimize bit-flip errors by increasing the separation between quantum states. However, this typically comes at the cost of increased phase-flip errors. By squeezing cat qubits, Alice & Bob has demonstrated a method to enhance bit-flip protection without compromising phase-flip performance. In experiments, squeezed cat qubits with an average of 4.1 photons achieved a bit-flip lifetime of 22 seconds, compared to 138 milliseconds for unsqueezed qubits. This improvement reduces the hardware overhead required for error correction, making fault-tolerant quantum computing more scalable.
The technique also resulted in a 50% reduction in Z-gate infidelity, with similar gains expected for two-qubit gates. These advancements position Alice & Bob’s platform as a cost-effective solution for achieving universal fault-tolerant quantum computing, with potential applications in chemistry, materials science, and beyond.
For more details, visit Alice & Bob’s LinkedIn post here.
March 11, 2025
Leave A Comment