Quantum computers get automatic error correction for the first time

A tiny quantum “refrigerator” can ensure that a quantum computer’s calculations start off error-free – without requiring oversight or even new hardware

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

9 January 2025

Quantum computing chips could use heat to eliminate errors

Chalmers University of Technology, Lovisa Håkansson

A tiny cooling device can automatically reset malfunctioning components of a quantum computer. Its performance suggests that manipulating heat could also enable other autonomous quantum devices.

Quantum computers aren’t yet fully practical because they make too many errors. In fact, if qubits – key components of this type of computer – accidentally heat up and become too energetic, they can end up in an erroneous state before the calculation even begins. One way to “reset” the qubits to their correct states is to cool them down.

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Simone Gasparinetti at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and his colleagues have delegated this task to an autonomous quantum “refrigerator” for the first time.

The researchers built two qubits and one “qutrit”, which can store more complex information than a qubit, from tiny superconducting circuits. The qutrit and one of the qubits formed a fridge for the second target qubit, which could eventually be used for computation.

The researchers carefully engineered the interactions between the three components to ensure that when the target qubit had too much energy, which caused errors, heat automatically flowed out of it and into the two other elements. This lowered the target qubit’s temperature and reset it. Because this process was autonomous, the qubit-and-qutrit fridge could correct errors without any outside control.