Event Archive

Steven M. Girvin - Yale University

Wednesday, June 29, 10:45AM (Zoom meeting starts at 10:30)

“Adventures in Quantum Phase Space: Why Bosons are Better than Qubits for Quantum Error Correction”

The fact that quantum error correction is possible in principle is, in many ways, far more amazing than the idea of quantum computation itself.  Quantum computers are analog devices and yet they evade the no-go theorem that precludes error correction in classical analog computers.  The grand challenge of the field is to realize quantum error correction in practice.  This talk will review the basics of quantum error correcting codes for qubits and then demonstrate that there are enormous practical advantages in using codes based on superpositions of small numbers of microwave photon states.  Experimental realizations of various newly developed ‘bosonic codes’ have successfully approached and for the first time have even exceeded the threshold where quantum error correction begins to extend the lifetime of quantum information.