Protection of quantum information in small clusters of qubits – PROTEQT

Modern digital electronics has reached an important junction. The traditional way of
delivering ever stronger computing power by simple miniaturization is no longer possible.
One potential avenue for future electronics lies in Quantum Computing which can potentially
deliver enormous computational power for certain tasks. Over the last decade, improvements
in the materials, design and new architectures for realizing qubits have led to an impressive
increase of their coherence time. Yet, further improving coherence is imperative to achieving
a fault tolerant quantum processor. We propose an approach to enhance qubit coherence by
orders of magnitude, based on storing quantum information in the lowest energy states of
short qubit chains. This encoding is protected from major sources of decoherence due to a
high degree of spatial symmetry supported by long range interactions. In this project we will
apply these principles to both Rydberg atoms and superconducting circuits which are
architectures that have the required properties to support this approach. The project will also
develop protocols to couple, control, readout and benchmark the qubits. Finally, this project
aims to reach a level of technological maturity such that this approach will have near term
applications in today’s quantum computing industry.