Error correcting codes for adiabatic quantum computation

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing interest in using adiabatic quantum computation as an architecture for experimentally realizable quantum computers. One of the reasons for this is the idea that the energy gap should provide some inherent resistance to noise. It is now known that universal quantum computation can be achieved adiabatically using 2-local Hamiltonians. The energy gap in these Hamiltonians scales as an inverse polynomial in the problem size. Here we present stabilizer codes which can be used to produce a constant energy gap against 1-local and 2-local noise. The corresponding fault-tolerant universal Hamiltonians are 4-local and 6-local respectively, which is the optimal result achievable within this framework.