Error detection on quantum computers improves accuracy of chemical calculations

Abstract

A major milestone of quantum error correction is to achieve the fault-tolerance threshold beyond which quantum computers can be made arbitrarily accurate. This requires extraordinary resources and engineering efforts. We show that even without achieving full fault tolerance, quantum error detection is already useful on the current generation of quantum hardware. We demonstrate this experimentally by executing an end-to-end chemical calculation for the hydrogen molecule encoded in the [[4, 2, 2]] quantum error-detecting code. The encoded calculation with logical qubits significantly improves the accuracy of the molecular ground-state energy.