Grant: Alliance Grants

Quantum computation promises extraordinary advances in computing in the long run for diverse applications with great societal impact in Canada. To fulfill the promises of quantum computation, it is required to counteract the inherent tendency of quantum systems to decohere and the unavoidably faulty nature of computing components. Quantum error correction was developed to meet these requirements. Two roadblocks impede the implementation of quantum error correction. First, even though codes with all the necessary properties (sparseness, finite rate, linear distance) are proven to exist in principle, it is not a priori clear how to devise such codes for near- to mid-term hardware. Second, even if we had a good supply of good quantum codes at our disposal, it is unclear how to put them to good use. The reason is that existing decoders for quantum error correcting codes are either fine-tuned for a given platform, unscalable, or both. This research project aims to tackle these challenges through a partnership between the PI and NVIDIA, a world-leading manufacturer of cutting-edge computing equipment and developer of high-performance numerical techniques for the simulation of quantum systems. This partnership will fast-track access to the full potential of quantum computation and its technological and economic impacts for Canadians. The two main research goals of this project are to provide a principled framework for quantum error-correcting code discovery, suitable for deployment in near- to mid-term quantum hardware, and to develop the algorithmic blocks necessary for code evaluation and real-time quantum error correction in practice. By achieving these goals, this project will provide a methodology for high-throughput discovery of sparse finite-rate quantum codes, a universal decoding framework for arbitrary noise channels and code topologies, and high-performance decoders for real-time quantum error correction.