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Physicists have for the first time grown nearly error-free quantum states on a superconducting chip, reducing errors by a factor of 40.
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Quantum computers require magical states — special helper particles for error-free operation. Previously, they were obtained through repeated purification, akin to endless distillation of alcohol: each step added entropy (disorder), like weeds in a garden, and consumed resources. The purity now achievable is usually characteristic only of products of supernova. The new approach, cultivation, works differently. Scientists place a 'seed' state into an ordered pattern of qubits, known as the Standard Model, and it sprouts into the desired form. On a superconducting chip, this garden produced a record purity of 99.99%, but only 8% of attempts were successful — the rest were discarded.
Like rare plant species, the surviving seedlings carry ideal properties.
This cultivation method reduced errors by 40 times and replaced complex purification. Quantum computers are now closer to discovering new materials and medicines.
Fault-tolerant quantum computing requires a universal gate set, but the necessary non-Clifford gates represent a significant resource cost for most quantum error correction architectures. Magic state cultivation offers an efficient alternative to resource-intensive distillation protocols; however, testing the proposal's assumptions represents a challenging departure from quantum memory experiments. We present an experimental study of magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor. We implement cultivation, including code-switching into a surface code, and develop a fault-tolerant measurement protocol to bound the magic state fidelity. Cultivation reduces the error by a factor of 40, with a state fidelity of 0.9999(1) (retaining 8% of attempts). Our results experimentally establish magic state cultivation as a viable solution to one of quantum computing's most significant challenges.