Nord Quantique, a quantum computing startup, has become the first company to demonstrate quantum error correction at the individual qubit level, improving qubit coherence lifetime by 14% without using additional physical qubits. The company’s approach incorporates redundancy into every logical qubit, reducing the number of physical qubits required for error correction once scaled. This makes their quantum computers highly efficient and scalable, potentially reaching fault-tolerance in a shorter time.
The company has also demonstrated the ability to correct both bit-flips and phase-flips, the most common types of errors in quantum computing, by applying GKP bosonic codes for error correction at the individual qubit level. This approach may require between 1,000 and 10,000 times fewer physical qubits than other computing models to effectively manage errors in the superconducting system and deliver useful results. Once at scale, Nord Quantique’s system will operate with clock speeds at megahertz frequency, between 100 and 1,000 times faster than some competing systems.
Nord Quantique’s efficient error correction, fast computational speeds, and clear road to scaling make its systems ideally suited for problems such as the simulations required in the materials science and pharmaceutical industries. The company believes it may deliver useful quantum computing sooner by devoting more resources to increasing the number of logical qubits and eliminating the need for a vast overhead of physical qubits dedicated to error correction.
The company’s results are produced by injecting microwave photons into a high-quality superconducting cavity and controlling their state using precise microwave pulses, enabling error correction within the qubit itself. This means that each of these individual physical qubits could ultimately be operated as logical qubits, even at scale. The company plans to unveil results from a multi-qubit system later this year.
Additional information is available in a news release located here and a technical paper posted on arXiv here. In addition, the company will also be making three presentations at the upcoming APS March Meeting on March 4-7, 2024. The abstracts of those presentations can be seen here.
February 8, 2024
