The chip itself is located on the lowest level of a large cryostat – a special cooling device – and operates at a temperature of just 0.01 Kelvin, barely above absolute zero.Īs their next step, the ETH researchers now want to build a chip with a five-by-five qubit lattice, which requires correspondingly more complex technology and will also feature more qubits for error correction. The highly specialized electronics used to control the qubits on the chip were manufactured by ETH spin-off Zurich Instruments. “But for most arithmetic operations, that’s not even necessary.” “Right now, we’re not correcting the errors directly in the qubits,” admits Sebastian Krinner, a scientist in Wallraff’s group and lead author of the study together with Nathan Lacroix.
The control electronics then correct the measurement signal accordingly. If a disturbance occurring in the logical qubit distorts the information, the system recognizes this disturbance as an error. (Bild: ETH Zürich / Quantum Device Lab) | The structure of the quantum computer chip with 17 qubits (in yellow). Die Abmessungen sind 14,3 mm mal 14,3 mm. The remaining eight qubits on the chip are offset from them their task is to detect errors in the system.ĭer Aufbau des Quantencomputer-Chips mit 17 Qubits (in gelb). Nine of the chip’s 17 qubits are arranged in a square three-by-three lattice and together form what is known as a logical qubit: the computational unit of a quantum computer.
#CORRECTABLE ERROR QUANTUM ERROR CORRECTION CODE#
The research team performed the error correction with what is known as the surface code – a method in which the quantum information of a qubit is distributed over several physical qubits. The researchers achieved this important success using a chip, specially produced in ETH Zurich’s own cleanroom laboratory, which features a total of 17 superconducting qubits.
Wallraff’s team has now presented the first system that can repeatedly detect as well as correct both types of errors. Previous error correction methods have been unable to simultaneously detect and correct both the fundamental types of error that occur in quantum systems. They have just published a paper on this as a preprint on and submitted it to a journal for publication.Īrxiv – Realizing Repeated Quantum Error Correction in a Distance-Three Surface Code This means they have overcome an important hurdle on the road to practical quantum computing. Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded, for the first time, in quickly and continuously correcting errors in digital quantum systems.