Superdecoherence through gate control noise

Abstract

The external control circuits of quantum gates inevitably introduce a small but finite noise to the operation of quantum computers. The complex modes of decoherence introduced by this noise are not covered by the common error models. Using the controlled-phase gate as an example, the effect of gate control noise on decoherence is investigated for different quantum computer architectures. It is shown that the decoherence rate rises faster than linearly with the length of a quantum register for most cases considered, adding to the challenge of implementing proposed error correcting and fault tolerant computation schemes. Sometimes an unwanted effective inter-qubit coupling associated with the noise appears.