Taming coherent errors in the surface code
Speaker: Benjamin Beri, University of Cambridge
The surface code, one of the leading candidates for quantum error correction (QEC), is known to protect quantum information against decoherence. However, the code’s constituent qubits can also suffer from coherent errors: spurious unitary evolution leading to many-body error interference that escapes conventional QEC intuition. In this talk, I will describe our recent progress with coherent errors in the surface code, including a statistical mechanics mapping and the links this implies between the QEC problem, localisation transitions in disordered superconductors, and entanglement transitions in monitored quantum circuits. Time permitting, I will also discuss the physics emerging with both coherent and incoherent errors, and how a symmetry topological field theory perspective links a phenomenological errorfield double description of the problem to entanglement transitions.