Joint CPM/RQMP/INTRIQ Seminar

Solid-state qubits and quantum cavities for fault-tolerant quantum computing

Bill Coish

McGill University

Realizing a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer would be an astounding technological achievement, but it would also be a landmark event in basic science. It would signal a transition from a world where information stored in quantum states is almost universally fragile, to a world where information could be preserved essentially indefinitely through error correction. There are two key hurdles to reaching fault tolerance: (i) errors due to decoherence from coupling to a potentially unknown environment and (ii) the practical question of scaling up to a size sufficient to suppress all errors while performing a useful computation. I will address these two questions by surveying some recent experimental and theoretical results that help us to better understand the character of the environment for solid-state qubits as well as strategies that can be used to couple and control solid-state qubits through flying qubits generated via cavities, relaxing requirements for scaling.