Small amounts of randomness in quantum error-decoding software can make computers millions of times more accurate.
Quantum computers are currently plagued by noise that causes them to lose their data. This new Lottery BP decoder uses a clever randomization trick to find and fix errors with unprecedented precision. It improves accuracy by up to eight orders of magnitude compared to previous methods. This massive jump is exactly what is needed to move from small experiments to useful, large-scale machines. It solves a major bottleneck that has been holding back the quantum revolution for years.
Lottery BP: Unlocking Quantum Error Decoding at Scale
arXiv · 2605.00038
To enable fault tolerance on millions of qubits in real time, scalable decoding is necessary, which motivates this paper. Existing decoding algorithms (decoders), such as clustering, matching, belief propagation (BP), and neural networks, suffer from one or more of inaccuracy, costliness, and incompatibility, upon a broad set of quantum error correction codes, such as surface code, toric code, and bivariate bicycle code. Therefore, there exists a gap between existing decoders and an ideal decode