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Fault tolerance against amplitude-damping noise using Bacon-Shor codes

Long D. H. My1,2,*, Akshaya Jayashankar3,*, Prabha Mandayam4,5, and Hui Khoon Ng1,2,†

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: huikhoon.ng@nus.edu.sg
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 033275 – Published 23 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/89td-45nl

Abstract

Designing efficient fault-tolerance schemes is crucial for building useful quantum computers. Most standard schemes assume no knowledge of the underlying device noise and rely on general-purpose quantum error-correcting (QEC) codes capable of handling arbitrary errors. Biased-noise alternatives focus on only correcting a subset of some generic error basis (e.g., Pauli error basis) and lower resource needs by channeling the redundancy to dealing only with that subset. Yet, the most resource-efficient codes are expected to be those that directly target the specific noise process that afflicts the quantum device, rather than using a generic error-basis description. However, the question of whether such noise-adapted QEC protocols are amenable to fault-tolerant implementations remains largely unexplored. Here, we design a fault-tolerance scheme based on the Bacon-Shor codes that can protect against amplitude-damping noise in the device. We construct a universal set of logical gadgets tolerant to multiple damping errors and estimate the fault-tolerance threshold of our scheme. Our work thus establishes the possibility of achieving fault tolerance against amplitude-damping noise using noise-adapted quantum codes, while highlighting some of the unique challenges that arise in this context.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 033275– Published 23 September, 2025
  • Received 25 April 2025
  • Accepted 20 August 2025
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