Magic State Cultivation on a Superconducting Quantum Processor

Fault-tolerant quantum computing requires a universal gate set, but the necessary non-Clifford gates represent a significant resource cost for most quantum error correction architectures. Magic state cultivation was proposed as an efficient alternative to resource-intensive distillation protocols, but testing the proposal's assumptions represents a challenging departure from quantum memory experiments. We present an experimental study of magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor. We implement cultivation, including code-switching into a surface code, and develop "kickback tomography" to rigorously bound the magic state fidelity. Our results experimentally establish magic state cultivation as a viable solution to one of quantum computing's most significant challenges.