Inplace Access to the Surface Code Y Basis

Abstract

In this paper, I cut the cost of Y basis measurement and initialization in the surface code by nearly an order of magnitude. Fusing twist defects diagonally across the surface code patch reaches the Y basis in $\lfloor d/2 \rfloor + 2$ rounds, without leaving the bounding box of the patch and without reducing the code distance. I use Monte Carlo sampling to benchmark the performance of the construction under circuit noise, and to analyze the distribution of logical errors. Cheap inplace Y basis measurement reduces the cost of S gates and magic state factories, and unlocks Pauli measurement tomography of surface code qubits on space-limited hardware.