ERC Starting Grant to Advance Reliable Quantum Error Correction

Announcement

Jonas Helsen of CWI has received a €1.5 million ERC Starting Grant to develop new methods for analysing and certifying fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Quantum computers could solve certain problems much more efficiently than conventional computers, but their basic information units, known as qubits, are highly susceptible to errors caused by environmental disturbances and imperfect control. As computations become longer and more complex, reliable quantum error correction becomes essential.

Recent progress in quantum hardware has enabled the first steps towards fault tolerant quantum computers, which are designed to detect and correct errors while computations are running. However, methods for assessing how well these error correction mechanisms perform are still developing.
With the five year ERC grant, Helsen, a researcher in CWI’s Algorithms & Complexity group, will develop methods for reliably analysing fault tolerant quantum computers. The project will investigate where errors arise, for example in individual qubits, their interactions, or the error correction process, and how these errors can be detected efficiently.

A further goal is to develop algorithms for constructing reliable digital twins of quantum computers. These models could help researchers simulate and test quantum devices despite the difficulty of reproducing quantum behaviour on conventional computers.

The research builds on Helsen’s earlier work on testing and characterising physical qubits and aims to provide practical tools for evaluating increasingly sophisticated fault tolerant quantum systems.

Link:
CWI Algorithms and Complexity group: https://www.cwi.nl/en/research/algorithms-and-complexity/