Quantum error correction enhanced by mid-circuit erasure conversion

Fault-tolerant quantum computing holds the promise of outperforming classical computing on certain tasks, but achieving fault tolerance remains a significant challenge that relies on the implementation of quantum error correction (QEC). Traditional QEC approaches often assume a Pauli error model, and its implementation requires substantial overhead. However, qubits can be engineered to exhibit more favorable error profiles, such as erasure errors, leading to a robust and efficient approach to fault-tolerant quantum computation. In this talk, we demonstrate mid-circuit detection of erasure errors in metastable 171Yb qubits to enhance the decoding of logical states within a [[4,2,2]] QEC code. Although the code is too small to correct a single Pauli error, mid-circuit erasure conversion enables it to improve the logical error rate by correcting up to a single erasure error during the decoding process. We will also discuss how erasure detection can be made robust to experimental noise via soft decoding.