D-Wave has published research demonstrating entanglement of two dual-rail qubits, a key step in validating the technology for future quantum computers. The dual-rail qubit design aims to simplify error detection and correction.
This development is significant as it demonstrates a key step in validating a novel qubit technology that promises to simplify error correction in quantum computers, potentially accelerating the path to practical quantum computation.
D-Wave, known for its quantum annealers, is advancing its work on gate-based quantum hardware by validating its dual-rail qubit technology. The company has published research in Nature demonstrating that two of these qubits can be entangled while maintaining their advantageous error detection properties. Dual-rail qubits, which utilize linked resonators, are designed such that the most common error is photon loss, easily detectable as an erasure. This simplified error hierarchy, with phase flips as the next most common error and bit flips being rare, is expected to streamline error correction, potentially reducing the hardware overhead for creating logical qubits.
The research shows that entangling two dual-rail qubits can be achieved rapidly, within approximately 500 nanoseconds, and crucially, preserves the error hierarchy observed in single-qubit operations. Photon loss remained the dominant error, occurring at a rate of about 0.5 percent per entanglement, while bit-flip errors were found to be nearly non-existent. D-Wave plans to scale this technology, aiming for 181 dual-rail qubits by 2028, which could enable more efficient pathways to useful quantum computation.