Noise thresholds for optical cluster-state quantum computation

Abstract

In this paper we do a detailed numerical investigation of the fault-tolerant threshold for optical cluster-state quantum computation. Our noise model allows both photon loss and depolarizing noise, as a general proxy for all types of local noise other than photon loss noise. We obtain a threshold region of allowed pairs of values for the two types of noise. Roughly speaking, our results show that scalable optical quantum computing is possible for photon loss probabilities less than 0.003, and for depolarization probabilities less than 0.0001. Our fault-tolerant protocol involves a number of innovations, including a method for syndrome extraction known as telecorrection, whereby repeated syndrome measurements are guaranteed to agree. This paper is an extended version of [Dawson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 020501].