Locating Rydberg Decay Error in SWAP-LRU

Abstract

Achieving fault-tolerant quantum computing with neutral atoms necessitates addressing inherent errors, particularly leakage from Rydberg states during the implementation of multi-qubit gates. Such leakage induces two-qubit error chains, which degrades the error distance and compromise the performance of error correction. While existing solutions, such as hardware-specific protocols (Erasure Conversion) and circuit-based protocols, have demonstrated favorable error distances (d_e = d for pure Rydberg decay) and high error thresholds, they rely on significant additional hardware resources. In this work, we propose a hardware-efficient approach to deal with Rydberg decay errors using SWAP-LRU, augmented by final leakage detection to locate errors. No additional resource is needed to remove leakage and renew atoms. When all leakage can be detected, we propose a located decoder and demonstrate a high error threshold of 2.33% per CNOT gate and demonstrate improved error distances for pure Rydberg decay, outperforming traditional Pauli error models. Furthermore, we introduce an alternative but more hardware-efficient solution, critical decoder. It only requires one type of leakage to be detected, yet effectively eliminates the damaging effects of Rydberg decay on sub-threshold scaling. Our findings provide new insights into located error and pave the way for a resource-efficient strategy to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computation with neutral atom arrays.