NC State and Duke Quantum Computing Seminars

Recently, Hastings & Haah published a preprint  (arXiv:2107.02194) describing a quantum code where the logical observables must dance around. The counter-intuitive nature of the code’s observables, and historical precedent, would suggest that estimating the circuit-noise threshold of such a code would take months of work. Instead, using the open source tools Stim and PyMatching, initial prototype estimates were done over a weekend. This talk will discuss how these tools were used, where they struggled, and why they were able to cope with an unforeseen quantum code. The talk will also discuss the bottlenecks that made turning the weekend prototype into a fully-fledged paper take an additional month.