Communications of the ACM
Closing In on Quantum Error Correction
Credit: Saatchi Art
After decades of research, quantum computers are approaching the scale at which they could outperform their "classical" counterparts on some problems. They will be truly practical, however, only when they implement quantum error correction, which combines many physical quantum bits, or qubits, into a logical qubit that preserves its quantum information even when its constituents are disrupted. Although this task once seemed impossible, theorists have developed multiple techniques for doing so, including "surface codes" that could be implemented in an integrated-circuit-like planar geometry.
For ordinary binary data, errors can be corrected, for example, using the majority rule: A desired bit, whether 1 or 0, is first triplicated as 111 or 000. Later, even if one of the three bits has been corrupted, the other two "outvote" it and allow recovery of the original data. Unfortunately, the "no-cloning" theorem of quantum mechanics forbids the duplication (or triplication) of a qubit.
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