Lattice surgery
In quantum computing, lattice surgery is a method for allowing for logic gates and interactions between two error-corrected qubits. This allows for parity checks and two-qubit entangling gates between the two qubits.
Current approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computing rely on surface codes which encode a single logical qubit in many physical qubits.[1] However, every surface code is only designed to encode a single qubit.[2] In order to actually do computation, these individual qubits must be able to talk to one another, and that is the purpose of lattice surgery.
The successful demonstration of lattice surgery is seen by many to be a necessary step to achieving large-scale quantum computers.
Background
Quantum error correction
The dominant method for quantum error correction are topological codes such as color codes and surface codes. These codes use many physical qubits to implement a single logical qubit. Such arrays of physical qubits are the lattices of lattice surgery. However, such codes only encode a single qubit.
Demonstrations
Lattice surgery has been experimentally demonstrated in trapped ions,[3] superconducting qubits,[4] and neutral atoms.[5]
References
- ↑ Kottmann, Korbinian (2025-12-17). "Introducing lattice surgery" (in en). PennyLane Demos. https://pennylane.ai/qml/demos/tutorial_lattice_surgery.
- ↑ Chatterjee, Avimita; Das, Subrata; Ghosh, Swaroop (2024-04-19). "Lattice Surgery for Dummies" (in en). https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.13202v2.
- ↑ Erhard, Alexander; Poulsen Nautrup, Hendrik; Meth, Michael; Postler, Lukas; Stricker, Roman; Stadler, Martin; Negnevitsky, Vlad; Ringbauer, Martin et al. (January 2021). "Entangling logical qubits with lattice surgery" (in en). Nature 589 (7841): 220–224. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-03079-6. ISSN 1476-4687. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03079-6.
- ↑ Besedin, Ilya; Kerschbaum, Michael; Knoll, Jonathan; Hesner, Ian; Bödeker, Lukas; Colmenarez, Luis; Hofele, Luca; Lacroix, Nathan et al. (February 2026). "Lattice surgery realized on two distance-three repetition codes with superconducting qubits" (in en). Nature Physics 22 (2): 189–194. doi:10.1038/s41567-025-03090-6. ISSN 1745-2481. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-03090-6.
- ↑ Bluvstein, Dolev; Geim, Alexandra A.; Li, Sophie H.; Evered, Simon J.; Bonilla Ataides, J. Pablo; Baranes, Gefen; Gu, Andi; Manovitz, Tom et al. (January 2026). "A fault-tolerant neutral-atom architecture for universal quantum computation" (in en). Nature 649 (8095): 39–46. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09848-5. ISSN 1476-4687. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09848-5.
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