Certifying qubit operations below the fault tolerance threshold
Robin Blume-Kohout, John King Gamble, Erik Nielsen, Kenneth Rudinger, Jonathan Mizrahi, Kevin Fortier, Peter Maunz · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2016
Quantum information processors promise fast algorithms for problems inaccessible to classical computers. But since qubits are noisy and error-prone, they will depend on fault-tolerant quantum correction (FTQEC) to compute reliably. Quantum correction can protect against general noise if -- and only if -- the in each physical qubit operation is smaller than a certain threshold. The threshold for general errors is quantified by their diamond norm. Until now, qubits have been assessed primarily by randomized benchmarking (RB), which reports a different error that is not sensitive to all errors, cannot be compared directly to diamond norm thresholds, and cannot efficiently certify a qubit for FTQEC. We use gate set tomography (GST) to completely characterize the performance of a trapped-Yb$^+$-ion qubit and certify it rigorously as suitable for FTQEC by establishing that its diamond norm rate is less than $6.7\times10^{-4}$ with $95\%$ confidence.