Towards Fault-Tolerant Quantum Information Processing with Trapped Ions

Abstract

Quantum Information Processing is a field of research that covers all the scientific and technological development that uses the principles of quantum mechanics for communication and computation. It seeks to understand and develop new ways of processing, storing, and transmitting information based on quantum mechanics. Quantum information processing has been a central focus of research during the last few decades and relevant results establish that quantum information processing can exceed those traditional ways of processing information. For example, quantum cryptography ensures more secure communications, and quantum computation has the potential to solve problems in faster polynomial time for which classical algorithms have not been found. Also, in quantum computation, we could simulate physical systems and processes, which can not be done with current supercomputers. However, one of the major challenges to the experimental realization of reliable quantum information processors is that quantum systems are really sensitive to noise. Unwanted interactions with the environment lead to errors that can corrupt the results of quantum computation. Nevertheless, the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation establishes that quantum computation is still possible if the noise in the quantum processor is not too strong. Fault-tolerant quantum computation operates on qubits encoded in a quantum errorcorrecting code. In quantum error correction, parity-check measurements allow the detection of faults in the encoded information. The fault-tolerant theory also tells us how to perform quantum gates on encoded qubits where single errors do not spread uncontrollably. However, ensuring the correct functioning of quantum error correction circuits is crucial to achieving fault tolerance inquantum processors subjected to noise...