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Learning to Decode the Surface Code with a Recurrent, Transformer-Based Neural Network

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arxiv 2310.05900 v1 pith:W7MZVNHE submitted 2023-10-09 quant-ph cs.LG

classification quant-phcs.LG
keywords quantumlearningcodedatasurfacebeyonddecodedecoder
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Quantum error-correction is a prerequisite for reliable quantum computation. Towards this goal, we present a recurrent, transformer-based neural network which learns to decode the surface code, the leading quantum error-correction code. Our decoder outperforms state-of-the-art algorithmic decoders on real-world data from Google's Sycamore quantum processor for distance 3 and 5 surface codes. On distances up to 11, the decoder maintains its advantage on simulated data with realistic noise including cross-talk, leakage, and analog readout signals, and sustains its accuracy far beyond the 25 cycles it was trained on. Our work illustrates the ability of machine learning to go beyond human-designed algorithms by learning from data directly, highlighting machine learning as a strong contender for decoding in quantum computers.

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Forward citations

Cited by 8 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Proof of a finite threshold for the union-find decoder

    quant-ph 2026-02 unverdicted novelty 8.0 of 10

    Union-find decoder for surface code achieves finite threshold under circuit-level stochastic errors with quasi-polylog parallel runtime bound.

  2. Physics-Informed Graph-Neural Decoding of the Surface Code: the Logical Signal as an Exact Topological Pairing

    quant-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    The logical-error signal in a surface-code decoder is an exact relative-cohomology pairing of the syndrome with a boundary-fixed harmonic coordinate, evaluated as the current difference between two boundary sinks.

  3. Coset Ensemble Decoder for Quantum Error Correction with Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design

    cs.AR 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Presents a coset ensemble decoder with algorithm-hardware co-design that claims better accuracy-latency trade-off and lower FPGA resource use than MWPM and UF baselines under depolarizing noise.

  4. Low Latency GNN Accelerator for Quantum Error Correction

    quant-ph 2026-03 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Hardware-guided pruning and quantization make a GNN surface-code decoder meet ~1 µs real-time latency on FPGA while cutting logical error rate 13–40% versus MWPM at d≤7, p=10⁻³.

  5. Learning Neural Decoding with Parallelism and Self-Coordination for Quantum Error Correction

    quant-ph 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A transformer-based decoder trained on local window labels learns to output per-window logical corrections that can be XORed across sliding windows, enabling parallel decoding with accuracy slightly above belief match...

  6. Low Latency GNN Accelerator for Quantum Error Correction

    quant-ph 2026-03 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    An FPGA-accelerated GNN decoder for surface-code quantum error correction delivers sub-1us latency and lower error rates than state-of-the-art approaches for code distances up to 7.

  7. Soft information decoding with superconducting qubits

    quant-ph 2024-11 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Soft decoding with analog measurement data raises repetition-code thresholds by 25% and reduces error rates up to 30x on superconducting qubits, with one byte per shot sufficient for near-optimal performance.

  8. Managing Classical Processing Requirements for Quantum Error Correction

    quant-ph 2024-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    A two-level decoder scheduling framework reduces classical processing requirements for quantum error correction by 10-40% on fault-tolerant benchmarks by managing bursty workloads as shared resources.

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