Qubit metrology for building a fault-tolerant quantum computer

Recent progress in quantum information has led to the start of several large national and industrial efforts to build a quantum computer. Researchers are now working to overcome many scientific and technological challenges. The program’s biggest obstacle, a potential showstopper for the entire effort, is the need for high-fidelity qubit operations in a scalable architecture. This challenge arises from the fundamental fragility of quantum information, which can only be overcome with quantum error correction. In a fault-tolerant quantum computer the qubits and their logic interactions must have errors below a threshold: scaling up with more and more qubits then brings the net error probability down to appropriate levels ~ 10−18 needed for running complex algorithms. Reducing error requires solving problems in physics, control, materials and fabrication, which differ for every implementation. I explain here the common key driver for continued improvement – the metrology of qubit errors.