Pauli Frames for Quantum Computer Architectures

Master thesis (2016)

Authors

Contributors

K. Bertels (mentor)
Department
Computer Engineering (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2016 Riesebos, L.
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Published Date

29-06-2016

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Computer Engineering

Abstract

Quantum computers hold the promise to solve problems that are intractable to classical computers. Since qubits suffer from extremely short lifetime and unreliable operations, Quantum Error Correction (QEC) forms a vital part of a quantum computer to enable Fault-Tolerant quantum computing. The usage of a Pauli frame can relax the time constraints on QEC by keeping track of detected errors in classical logic. For the first time, in the background of a heterogeneous quantum computer architecture, we clarified the input/output and working principles of a Pauli frame, which can soon be mapped to a hardware implementation. We proposed the first functional quantum computer architecture simulation platform, QPDO, which can connect to different quantum simulators, such as QX Simulator or CHP, and is used to verify the logical operations of a Surface Code 17 (SC17) logical qubit. Finally, by using QPDO we found that a Pauli frame does not improve the Logical Error Rate (LER) of a SC17 logical qubit, which is opposite to previous understanding. By further reasoning, we also expect no improvement in LER by using a Pauli frame for surface codes with a larger distance. Nevertheless, the usage of a Pauli frame is still crucial for relaxing the timing constraints on QEC.