Gothenburg, Sweden – September 10, 2026
Quantum computers remain highly vulnerable to errors and tiny disturbances from their surroundings. The longer a quantum operation takes to complete, the more time there is for those errors to build up. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now developed a method that can perform a broad range of advanced quantum operations more than a thousand times faster. The advance tackles a major obstacle in the field and could help move quantum computing closer to becoming fault-tolerant.
The scientific paper "Single-Period Floquet Control of Bosonic Codes with Quantum Lattice Gates" has been published in Physical Review Letters. The authors are Tangyou Huang, Lei Du and Lingzhen Guo. The researchers are affiliated with Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and Tianjin University in China.
Quantum Error Correction Bottleneck
Quantum computers could eventually transform areas such as drug discovery, energy technology, cryptography, artificial intelligence, and logistics. Before that can happen, however, these machines need to become much more dependable.
A major challenge is that quantum computations can be disrupted by extremely small environmental effects. Electrical noise, cosmic radiation, and overheating can all introduce errors while information is being processed.
If too many errors accumulate before they can be corrected, the computation can fail, says Lei Du, researcher in Applied Quantum Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and lead author of the theoretical study.
Quantum Lattice Gates Provide a Shortcut
To make quantum computing more resilient and eventually fault-tolerant, researchers are investigating new ways to shield quantum information from errors. One promising strategy uses so-called bosonic quantum codes. Instead of assigning quantum information to individual qubits, this approach stores it in microwave fields inside superconducting circuits.
Rather than storing quantum information in individual qubits, bosonic codes encode information in the microwave fields found within superconducting circuits. This approach has been shown to provide stronger protection against certain types of errors, explains Tangyou Huang, researcher in Quantum Technology at Chalmers and co-author of the study.
Working with bosonic quantum codes is not simple. Creating and controlling the required quantum states has traditionally involved guiding a quantum system through thousands of repeated driving cycles. That process can take considerable time, and every additional cycle creates another opportunity for outside disturbances to interfere with the calculation. In quantum computing, speed is therefore closely tied to reliability.
Chalmers researchers Lei Du and Tangyou Huang have now proposed a different strategy. Rather than constructing the desired quantum states one small piece at a time, their method can perform a wide variety of operations much faster.
Our method shows that a diverse range of quantum operations on bosonic states can be completed within a single driving cycle, rather than the several thousand cycles that have been required previously. This makes the operations both faster and more efficient, while reducing the risk that disturbances will corrupt the information before the process is finished. It represents an important step towards fault-tolerant quantum computers, says Lei Du.
Quantum lattice gates, a recently proposed universal set of quantum gates developed by the same research team, act as shortcuts. Instead of requiring a long sequence of repeated control steps, they can allow the intended quantum operation to be completed in just one driving cycle. That could make the process faster, simpler, and less vulnerable to errors.
You can think of it like building a large Lego castle. Instead of assembling it brick by brick and risking mistakes along the way, quantum lattice gates act like pre-built Lego modules that can be connected quickly and efficiently, says Tangyou Huang.
Compatible With Superconducting Quantum Platforms
The technique is especially well suited to superconducting quantum computers, which are among the most prominent technologies being developed in the international push toward large-scale quantum computing.
Chalmers University of Technology is also using superconducting technology as it develops a 100-qubit quantum computer.
A key advantage of our approach is that it can be implemented using existing superconducting quantum circuit platforms. We are already discussing possible experimental realizations with colleagues at Chalmers, and we hope to see a demonstration of the method in the near future, says Tangyou Huang.
The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology (WACQT), and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
The researchers say the work addresses a central problem facing the field: efficiently producing and controlling quantum states that are capable of helping correct errors.
Our results address one of the major bottlenecks in the field: how to quickly and reliably create and control the error-correcting quantum states that could play an important role in future quantum computers, says Lei Du.
Source: Chalmers University of Technology, September 10, 2026. Physical Review Letters, September 10, 2026. ScienceDaily, September 11, 2026.
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