Trapped-ion quantum computer achieves breakeven performance with qLDPC error-correcting codes
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[Submitted on 4 Jun 2026]
Baker's choice. Dense with flavour, light on filler.
Summary
Researchers at Quantinuum demonstrated breakeven performance of quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes on a trapped-ion quantum computer. They implemented nine quantum error-correcting codes across three families (qLDPC, topological, and concatenated) on a single device without hardware reconfiguration. A key achievement was a qLDPC code encoding 4 logical qubits into 18 physical qubits, achieving a logical error rate up to 9x better than previous demonstrations on superconducting qubits. The experiments showed breakeven performance where qubit lifetimes matched or slightly exceeded those of the trapped-ion qubits. The team used a novel optical-metastable-ground (OMG) architecture for mid-circuit measurement and reset, eliminating the need for ion transport or dedicated coolant ions.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledHigh-rate quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes are a leading candidate for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
We leverage the flexibility of a trapped-ion quantum computer to demonstrate nine quantum error-correcting codes with starkly different qubit connectivity requirements on a single device without any hardware reconfiguration.
With a qLDPC code encoding 4 logical qubits into 18 physical qubits, we achieve a logical error rate up to $9\times$ better than a previous demonstration of a similar code on superconducting solid-state qubits.
Our implementation exhibits breakeven performance, with some instances achieving qubit lifetimes comparable to or slightly exceeding that of our trapped-ion qubits.
We use a novel implementation of the optical-metastable-ground (OMG) architecture for addressable mid-circuit measurement and reset, which enables us to perform these experiments without any ion transport or dedicated coolant ions.
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