Optimization of the surface code design for Majorana-based qubits
Rui Chao, Michael E. Beverland, Nicolas Delfosse, Jeongwan Haah
Abstract
The surface code is a prominent topological error-correcting code exhibiting high fault-tolerance accuracy thresholds. Conventional schemes for error correction with the surface code place qubits on a planar grid and assume native CNOT gates between the data qubits with nearest-neighbor ancilla qubits.Here, we present surface code error-correction schemes using <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mml:mtext class="MJX-tex-mathit" mathvariant="italic">only</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math> Pauli measurements on single qubits and on pairs of nearest-neighbor qubits. In particular, we provide several qubit layouts that offer favorable trade-offs between qubit overhead, circuit depth and connectivity degree. We also develop minimized measurement sequences for syndrome extraction, enabling reduced logical error rates and improved fault-tolerance thresholds.Our work applies to topologically protected qubits realized with Majorana zero modes and to similar systems in which multi-qubit Pauli measurements rather than CNOT gates are the native operations.