Mastering the Noise: Effective Strategies for Overcoming Noise in Quantum Computing

Overcoming noise in quantum computations is an ongoing area of research, and new techniques and approaches are being developed all the time. As #quantumcomputing technology continues to advance, it is likely that new and more effective ways to mitigate noise and errors will be discovered.?By deriving a formula that predicts the effects of environmental noise, scientists have made significant progress in quantum computing. This is crucial for the design and construction of quantum computers that can function effectively in our imperfect world.

Ludovico Lami (QuSoft, University of Amsterdam) and Mark M. Wilde (Cornell) have made significant strides in quantum computing by formulating a predictive formula for the impact of environmental noise. This development is critical for the creation and construction of quantum computers that can operate effectively in our human world.

Disruptive environmental noise

A significant obstacle to quantum computing is environmental #noise . Such noise can be likened to a little demon that alters the phase of different branches of the wave function in an unpredictable way. This process of tampering with the phase of a quantum system is called #dephasing, and can be detrimental to the success of a quantum computation.

Dephasing can occur in everyday devices such as optical fibres, which are used to transfer information in the form of light. Light rays travelling through an optical fibre can take different paths; since each path is associated to a specific phase, not knowing the path taken amounts to an effective dephasing noise.

In their new publication in Nature Photonics, Lami and Wilde analyse a model, called the bosonic dephasing channel, to study how noise affects the transmission of quantum information. It represents the dephasing acting on a single mode of light at definite wavelength and polarisation.

The number quantifying the effect of the noise on quantum information is the quantum capacity, which is the number of qubits that can be safely transmitted per use of a fibre. The new publication provides a full analytical solution to the problem of calculating the quantum capacity of the #bosonic dephasing channel, for all possible forms of dephasing noise.

To overcome the effects of noise, one can incorporate redundancy in the message to ensure that the quantum information can still be retrieved at the receiving end.

The new study quantifies exactly how much redundancy needs to be added to a quantum message to protect it from dephasing noise. This is significant because it enables scientists to quantify the effects of noise on quantum computing and develop methods to overcome these effects.?If this works successfully at a large scale, we can anticipate quantum computers using at the room temperature.