IBM Reduces Quantum Error Correction Overhead by 63-Fold with New Technique

IBM researchers have made significant progress in reducing the overhead of error correction on noisy quantum computers. In a new study, they combined two existing techniques to achieve a 63-fold reduction in sampling overhead.

The team used IBM's ibm_aachen superconducting processor and tested the method on circuits with up to 648 controlled-Z gates. They found that by combining error detection with probabilistic error cancellation (PEC), they could reduce the noise that PEC had to mitigate, resulting in a significant reduction in sampling overhead.

The study's authors, Laurin Fischer, Ali Javadi-Abhari, Simon Martiel, and Alireza Seif, wrote that their result shows that techniques associated with error mitigation and correction can work together before fully fault-tolerant quantum computers arrive. They also noted that this result builds on IBM's broader effort to make quantum systems more usable.