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Probing Qubit Memory Errors at the Part-per-Million Level.
M. Sepiol, A. C. Hughes, J. E. Tarlton, D. P. Nadlinger, T. Ballance, C. Ballance, T. Harty, A. Steane, J. F. Goodwin, D. Lucas·May 16, 2019·DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.110503
PhysicsMedicine
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Abstract
Robust qubit memory is essential for quantum computing, both for near-term devices operating without error correction, and for the long-term goal of a fault-tolerant processor. We directly measure the memory error ε_{m} for a ^{43}Ca^{+} trapped-ion qubit in the small-error regime and find ε_{m}<10^{-4} for storage times t≲50 ms. This exceeds gate or measurement times by three orders of magnitude. Using randomized benchmarking, at t=1 ms we measure ε_{m}=1.2(7)×10^{-6}, around ten times smaller than that extrapolated from the T_{2}^{*} time, and limited by instability of the atomic clock reference used to benchmark the qubit.