Radiation‐Induced Fault Detection in Superconducting Quantum Devices

ABSTRACT The quest for universal superconducting quantum computing is hindered by noise and errors. It has been proven that Quantum Error Correction (QEC) codes will lay at the foundation of fault‐tolerant quantum computing. However, cosmic‐ray‐induced correlated errors, the most detrimental events that can impact superconducting quantum computers, are yet to be efficiently tackled. In order to reach fault tolerance, we must also develop radiation aware methods to complement QEC. In this paper, the first algorithm to effectively exploit syndrome information for the efficient detection of radiation events in superconducting quantum devices at runtime is proposed. A thorough analysis of simulated Rotated Surface codes injecting over 11 million physics‐modeled radiation‐induced faults is performed. The properties of the X and Z check bases, the impact of code distance, and the decoder's time to solution constraints are considered. The technique detects of injected faults, regardless of the impact's position. Moreover, both the radiation impact center and the area affected are accurately identified, with an overhead lower than the decoding time. Additionally, the fault identification information is used to propose a radiation fault correction technique that improves of up to the output correctness compared to existing decoders.