Protection of quantum information in small clusters of qubits

现代数字电子已经到了一个重要的路口。通过简单的计算机化来提供更强大的计算能力的传统方式已经不再可能。未来电子学的一个潜在途径在于量子计算，它可以为某些任务提供巨大的计算能力。在过去的十年中，材料、设计和实现量子位的新架构的改进导致了它们的相干时间的显著增加。然而，进一步提高相干性对于实现容错量子处理器至关重要。我们提出了一种方法，以提高量子比特相干性的数量级，基于存储量子信息的最低能量状态的短量子比特链。由于长程相互作用支持的高度空间对称性，这种编码受到保护，不受退相干的主要来源的影响。在这个项目中，我们将这些原则应用到里德堡原子和超导电路，这是具有所需的属性，以支持这种方法的架构。该项目还将开发协议来耦合，控制，读出和基准量子位。最后，该项目旨在达到技术成熟度，使这种方法在当今的量子计算行业中具有短期应用。

Modern digital electronics has reached an important junction. The traditional way of delivering ever stronger computing power by simple miniaturisation is no longer possible. One potential avenue for future electronics lies in Quantum Computing which can potentially deliver enormous computational power for certain tasks. Over the last decade, improvements in the materials, design and new architectures for realising qubits have led to an impressive increase of their coherence time. Yet, further improving coherence is imperative to achieving a fault tolerant quantum processor. We propose an approach to enhance qubit coherence by orders of magnitude, based on storing quantum information in the lowest energy states of short qubit chains. This encoding is protected from major sources of decoherence due to a high degree of spatial symmetry supported by long range interactions. In this project we will apply these principles to both Rydberg atoms and superconducting circuits which are architectures that have the required properties to support this approach. The project will also develop protocols to couple, control, readout and benchmark the qubits. Finally, this project aims to reach a level of technological maturity such that this approach will have near term applications in today's quantum computing industry.