“We directly observed quasiparticle bursts leading to correlated errors that are induced solely by muons and separated the contributions of muons and gamma rays,” they said in a paper published last month by the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.
The findings could be significant for the scaling of quantum processors and the design of fault-tolerant quantum computing systems, which can function properly even if faults or errors are present, the scientists said.
According to the team – from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences and Nanjing Normal University – the proposed detection method could also be applied in cosmic ray and dark matter particle detection.
Unlike traditional computing’s unit of information that exists either as 0 or 1, its quantum counterpart relies on quantum bits or qubits that can exist in a multidimensional state, making possible more advanced and secure tasks.
However, errors can occur simultaneously in multiple qubits. On a small scale, these multiqubit correlated errors can be reduced with optimised error correction methods, though the efficacy of these strategies diminishes in larger-scale computing.
