The Fibonacci scheme for fault-tolerant quantum computation

Abstract

We rigorously analyze Knill's Fibonacci scheme for fault-tolerant quantum computation, which is based on the recursive preparation of Bell states protected by a concatenated error-detecting code. We prove lower bounds on the threshold fault rate of .67\times 10^{-3} for adversarial local stochastic noise, and 1.25\times 10^{-3} for independent depolarizing noise. In contrast to other schemes with comparable proved accuracy thresholds, the Fibonacci scheme has a significantly reduced overhead cost because it uses postselection far more sparingly.

24 pages, 10 figures; supersedes arXiv:0709.3603. (v2): Additional discussion about the overhead cost