Scalable quantum error correction tailored for a heavy-hex qubit array

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 15 Apr 2026] Scalable quantum error correction tailored for a heavy-hex qubit array Seok-Hyung Lee, Xanda C. Kolesnikow, Jun Zen, Evan T. Hockings, Campbell K. McLauchlan, Georgia M. Nixon, Thomas R. Scruby, Stephen D. Bartlett, Robin Harper, Benjamin J. Brown To produce an operable quantum computer that is made with imperfect hardware, we must design and test scalable quantum error correcting codes that are suited for the devices we can build and, in unison, develop decoding strategies that accommodate device-specific noise characteristics. Here, we introduce the \emph{dynamic compass code}, a subsystem code with a novel syndrome extraction cycle, that has a competitive threshold while making efficient use of qubits arranged on a heavy-hex lattice. We use a superconducting qubit array to implement a distance-5 instance of this code, and demonstrate how detailed noise characterisation can boost decoder performance to yield significant improvements in logical error rates. We perform averaged circuit eigenvalue sampling (ACES) to acquire detailed context-dependent error information on all elements of the syndrome extraction process. Furthermore, we leverage soft information produced from measurement devices to augment the decoder with measurement error information and detect leakage errors for exclusion through post-selection. Our noise-informed approach yields up to 38.3\% improvement in the logical error rate of a distance-5 implementation of the dynamic compass code in experiment. Comments: 15 pages; 7 figures; comments welcome Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.14296 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.14296v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.14296 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Benjamin Brown [view email] [v1] Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:00:21 UTC (7,805 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?)