Hardware
Quantinuum reports 99.9995% logical fidelity using color code on Helios
Quantinuum says it set a quantum error-correction record on its Helios trapped-ion computer, reporting a logical fidelity of 99.9995%, or five errors per million operations. The company says the error rate is 10 times lower than its September result and 100 times lower than the best published result from other hardware approaches, which it attributed to Google Quantum AI's superconducting system. The study used a color code with up to 37 physical qubits per logical qubit, versus 10 physical qubits per logical qubit for the Helix code in September. Quantinuum says logical errors fell exponentially as code distance increased, with each tested increase cutting remaining errors by a factor of 12.
Why it mattersError correction is widely seen as a central step toward useful fault-tolerant quantum computers. Robin Blume-Kohout of Sandia National Laboratories, who was not involved in the study, called it a significant milestone, while the performance claims themselves come from Quantinuum, which says the result is within the target range for its planned Apollo machine.