Protocol for Purifying Noisy Preparation and Measurements of Qubits

Abstract

Noise affecting qubit preparation and measurements accounts for a significant fraction of errors in quantum information processing. This is especially critical in tasks like variational quantum algorithms, quantum error correction, and entanglement distribution through repeaters. In this work, we present a protocol to purify noisy SPAM, effectively suppressing these errors to an arbitrarily low level. For instance, in a realistic scenario where qubits contain error rates around $0.05$ in both preparation and measurement, the protocol can suppress error rates up to $10^{-3}$ with a single ancilla and $10^{-6}$ with four ancillas. We show how to distill error-free SPAM by repeating noisy SPAMs. The protocol is also feasible with superconducting qubits. We envisage that our results can be used to realize quantum information tasks in computing and communication with negligible SPAM errors.