Measurement-free fault-tolerant logical zero-state encoding of the distance-three nine-qubit surface code in a one-dimensional qubit array

Abstract

Generation of logical zero states encoded with a quantum error-correcting code is the first step for fault-tolerant quantum computation, but requires considerably large resource overheads in general. To reduce such overheads, we propose an efficient encoding method for the distance-three, nine-qubit surface code and show its fault tolerance. This method needs no measurement, unlike other fault-tolerant encoding methods. Moreover, this is applicable to a one-dimensional qubit array. Observing these facts, we experimentally demonstrate the logical zero-state encoding of the surface code using a superconducting quantum computer on the cloud. We also experimentally demonstrate the suppression of fast dephasing due to intrinsic residual interactions in this machine by a dynamical decoupling technique dedicated for the qubit array. To extend this method to larger codes, we also investigate the concatenation of the surface code with itself, resulting in a distance-nine, 81-qubit code. We numerically show that fault-tolerant encoding of this large code can be achieved by appropriate error detection. Thus, the proposed encoding method will provide a new way to low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation.