A Cross-Platform Analysis of Practical Quantum Error Correction Codes

Abstract:The theory of quantum error correction was established decades ago. Yet limitations in physical noise levels and available physical-qubit counts continue to hinder the development of scalable quantum computing systems. In this paper, we present analytical estimates of logical error rates for advanced QEC codes across leading hardware platforms and distributed quantum computing systems using a simple but unified framework. The analysis captures dominant contributors to logical error, including effective circuit volume and two-qubit gate overhead. The framework provides a fast and conservative estimate of logical error rates and identification of dominating factors in different hardware platforms, such as circuit volume, routing overhead, inter-QPU operations, or asymmetric noise protection. We show that several qualitative trends observed in larger-scale simulations can be reproduced and interpreted analytically within this framework. We further demonstrate that the framework can be used to find the sweet spot design region of distributed QEC, which is critical for the design of distributed quantum computing systems.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET)

arXiv:2607.04082 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2607.04082v2 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.04082 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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