Magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor
Fault-tolerant quantum computing requires a universal gate set, but the necessary non-Clifford gates represent a significant resource cost for most quantum error correction architectures. Magic state cultivation offers an efficient alternative to resource-intensive distillation protocols; however, testing the proposal's assumptions represents a challenging departure from quantum memory experiments. We present an experimental study of magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor. We implement cultivation, including code-switching into a surface code, and develop a fault-tolerant measurement protocol to bound the magic state fidelity. Cultivation reduces the error by a factor of 40, with a state fidelity of at least 0.9999(1) (retaining 8% of attempts). Our results experimentally establish magic state cultivation as a viable solution to one of quantum computing's most important challenges.
Authors
- Ming Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0827-5976)
- Robert Geiger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5812-0978)
- Rajeev Acharya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0240-724X)
- Juan Campero
- Brooks Foxen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3732-168X)
- Frank Arute (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7179-0631)
- Michael Broughton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-1725-9488)
- Anthony Cabrera
- Dar Gilboa
- Sean Demura (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3727-7380)
- Ben Curtin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3856-0615)
- Leslie Flores Burgos
- Dmitry A. Abanin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2461-0271)
- Bob B. Buckley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5139-7931)
- Jamal Busnaina (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7923-2995)
- E. Gonzales (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9122-2033)
- Lior Ella (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1046-061X)
- James E. Goeders
- Simon Bilodeau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0667-2732)
- Agnetta Y. Cleland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3932-3881)
- Alec Eickbusch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5179-0215)
- Paul Conner
- L. Brill
- Rodrigo G. Cortiñas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3706-306X)
- Vinicius S. Ferreira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9522-2567)
- Emma Rosenfeld (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4153-4805)
- Tim Burger
- Liang-Ying Chih (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9324-8168)
- Amira Abbas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3383-2287)
- Marcos Flores-Ãlamo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2996-7616)
- Stijn J. de Graaf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1111-4460)
- Raja Gosula (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3025-7312)
- Andreas Bengtsson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5264-4025)
- Masaya Fukami (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6543-5572)
- Ilya Drozdov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8185-1194)
- Nathan Lacroix (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2002-9495)
- B. Chiaro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2913-2790)
- Nicholas Bushnell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7445-1654)
- M. Ansmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8765-5621)
- Ebrahim Forati (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9917-6246)
- Nikita Astrakhantsev (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6059-1867)
- Ryan Babbush (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6979-9533)
- Jenna Bovaird (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3331-2786)
- Georg Aigeldinger
- Felix Borjans (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9652-097X)
- Élie Genois (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2226-1813)
- Dvir Kafri (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9160-5176)
- Alexander L. Crook (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-9295)
- Alexander Bilmes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5029-915X)
- Volodymyr Sivak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5108-4011)
- Alexis Morvan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9515-6184)
- Suhas Ganjam (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3198-3922)
- Joseph C. Bardin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6523-6730)
- Juan Atalaya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3055-2730)
- Helge Gehring (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3034-3528)
- Gabrielle Roberts (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3309-5205)
- Kunal Arya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6486-7100)
- Brian Burkett (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8474-6317)
- Hung-Shen Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9681-6108)
- Jeffrey Marshall (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5011-1281)
- Trond I. Andersen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7806-1626)
- Alejandro Grajales Dau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6713-0964)
- Robert Gasca (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8263-091X)
- Laleh Aghababaie Beni
- Brett Buchea
- Aviv Moshe Elbag
- Mahmoud Elzouka
- Andrew Dunsworth
- Sayan Das (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4853-1051)
- Catherine Erickson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7432-5946)
- J. G. Cogan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7194-7566)
- Craig Gidney
- Lara Faoro
- Zijun Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0844-2409)
- Silas Chen
- Paul Donohoe
- Brian Ballard
- David A. Browne
- William Courtney
- Dripto M. Debroy
- Ross Alcaraz
- Martin Damyanov
- Lenny Fuste
- Christopher Garrick
- Valerie Ehimhen
- Walt Askew
- D. Bowers
- S. Fontes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8232-8703)
- W. Giang
- J. Ford
- A. Wing Lun Fung
- G. Garcia
- H. Bates
- B. Cochrane
- M. Bigdeli Karimi
- P. Brooks
- M. Cockrell
- H. Cook
- S. Alcaraz
- D. Enriquez
Institutions
- Ames Research Center (US)
- Google (United States) (US)
- University of Connecticut (US)
- Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (US)
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2026-10-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aee7961
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00