npj Quantum Information, Published online: 14 October 2024; doi:10.1038/s41534-024-00892-z
Extending the computational reach of a superconducting qutrit processor
Quantum computing with qudits is an emerging approach that exploits a larger, more connected computational space, providing advantages for many applications, including quantum simulation and quantum error correction.
Nonetheless, qudits are typically afflicted by more complex errors and suffer greater noise sensitivity which renders their scaling difficult.
In this work, the researchers introduce techniques to tailor arbitrary qudit Markovian noise to stochastic Weyl–Heisenberg channels and mitigate noise that commutes with Clifford and universal two-qudit gate in generic qudit circuits.
They have experimentally demonstrated these methods on a superconducting transmon qutrit processor, and benchmark their effectiveness for multipartite qutrit entanglement and random circuit sampling, obtaining up to 3× improvement in our results.
This might constitute the first-ever error mitigation experiment performed on qutrits. Their work shows that despite the intrinsic complexity of manipulating higher-dimensional quantum systems, noise tailoring and error mitigation can significantly extend the computational reach of today’s qudit processors.
