Efficient simulation of quantum error correction circuits under temporally-correlated noise

Non-Markovian noise sources are ubiquitous in contemporary quantum computing hardware across nearly every candidate hardware modality. This non-Markovianity includes noise induced by fluctuating device parameters with temporal-correlations, including well-known examples such as quasistatic and 1/f “pink” noise. Understanding the impact of these noise sources on the practical performance of quantum error correction (QEC) is an important step in forecasting progress toward large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). But doing so has been largely hampered by the computational costs of simulating these processes at scales relevant to FTQC. In this talk we will introduce an extension of a recently developed algorithm called “error generator propagation” for simulating noisy Clifford circuits under general Markovian noise which is capable of efficiently simulating non-Markovian temporally-correlated noise. To demonstrate the utility of this approach we will present initial results from simulating syndrome extraction circuits for a number of small-scale QEC codes under quasistatic and 1/f noise.

SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525.