Quantum computers are extremely sensitive to errors caused by environmental effects. Electrical noise, cosmic radiation and overheating can cause errors while information is being processed. While classical computers have methods that can quickly detect and correct errors, qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, are much more fragile. If errors accumulate without being corrected, the computation can fail.
Researchers Lei Du and Tangyou Huang from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a method that can perform advanced quantum operations more than a thousand times faster than before. According to the theoretical study published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the method could contribute to the development of more reliable and, in the future, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Instead of storing information in individual qubits, the researchers used the bosonic quantum codes approach, which encodes information in microwave fields in superconducting circuits. These codes are said to provide stronger protection against certain types of errors. However, creating and controlling the desired quantum states in these systems traditionally required thousands of repeated driving cycles. Each additional cycle created a new opportunity for external factors to disrupt the computation.
The Chalmers team’s method aims to perform a wide range of operations on bosonic states within a single driving cycle instead of thousands of cycles. The approach is based on universal quantum gates called Quantum lattice gates, developed by the same research team. These gates work like shortcuts that allow operations to be completed in a single cycle rather than through long control sequences. The acceleration and simplification of operations could reduce the risk of quantum information becoming corrupted.
The technique was designed to be compatible with superconducting quantum computers, which stand out for large-scale quantum computing. Chalmers University of Technology is developing a 100-qubit quantum computer with this technology. The researchers reported that the method could be implemented on existing superconducting quantum circuit platforms and that they had discussed possible experimental applications with their colleagues at Chalmers.
The authors of the study, titled “Single-Period Floquet Control of Bosonic Codes with Quantum Lattice Gates,” are Tangyou Huang, Lei Du and Lingzhen Guo. The researchers are affiliated with Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and Tianjin University in China. The study was funded by NSFC, WACQT and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Why it matters
The significance of the study lies in its focus not only on the resilience of codes in quantum error correction, but also on how few control steps are needed to operate these codes. Shortening control processes offers an approach that could leave fewer opportunities for environmental effects to produce disruptive results during computation. For this reason, the proposal has direct technical relevance, particularly for research teams working on superconducting circuits and aiming to develop scalable quantum computers. However, the results are currently limited to a theoretical method; it is not yet clear whether the method can be implemented experimentally in existing circuits or to what extent it could contribute to fault-tolerant operation. The fact that Chalmers researchers have discussed possible experimental applications shows that these questions constitute the next stage of evaluating the study.
Background
Scientists is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published a news report mentioning this name in the last 90 days; that article was dated September 12, 2026.
Term: quantum computer
A quantum computer processes information using units that can carry it in intermediate states as well as 0 and 1; today’s machines are used for narrow and experimental problems.