The Rotation Gap Is Not An Error: Ternary Structure in IBM Quantum Hardware

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 13 Apr 2026] The Rotation Gap Is Not An Error: Ternary Structure in IBM Quantum Hardware Selina Stenberg Quantum error correction assumes that all syndrome activations represent errors requiring correction. We present evidence from 756 QEC runs across three IBM Eagle r3 processors that this assumption is wrong. The hardware exhibits sub-Poissonian syndrome statistics (Fano factor F = 0.856, t = -131 against Poisson, zero dependence on code distance), indicating that a fraction of syndrome events are not random noise but structured cooperative transitions. We introduce a regime classifier decoder that distinguishes binary errors (which should be corrected) from ternary transitions (which should not). On a mixed binary/ternary error model calibrated to IBM hardware statistics, the classifier reduces logical error rates by 7-19% at static detection depth (tau = 1) across all cell sizes, with statistical significance p < 0.05 in 7 of 8 test conditions (p < 0.0001 in all four tau = 1 conditions). The improvement mechanism is selective abstention: the classifier correctly identifies 75-98% of ternary transitions and leaves them uncorrected (75-81% at tau = 1, 88-98% at tau = 5), whereas a standard decoder miscorrects them, introducing errors that would not otherwise exist. A cross-platform control on Google's 105-qubit Willow processor (420 experiments, d = 3, 5, 7) shows the opposite: super-Poissonian statistics (F = 2.42), super-linear burst scaling, and positive spatial correlation -- confirming that the sub-Poissonian signal is absent from standard surface-code circuits that lack the P-gate asymmetry. The result demonstrates that standard QEC actively destroys quantum information by correcting valid ternary states, and that less correction produces better performance when the hardware has cooperative error structure. Comments: 30 pages, 6 figures, 6 tables. Code and data available at this https URL Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.11963 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.11963v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.11963 Focus to learn more Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19438935 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Selina Stenberg [view email] [v1] Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:54:39 UTC (935 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)