Quantum Error Correction Sonnet

By Daniel Gottesman

We cannot clone, perforce; instead, we split
Coherence to protect it from that wrong
That would destroy our valued quantum bit
And make our computation take too long.

Correct a flip and phase - that will suffice.
If in our code another error's bred,
We simply measure it, then God plays dice,
Collapsing it to X or Y or Zed.

We start with noisy seven, nine, or five
And end with perfect one. To better spot
Those flaws we must avoid, we first must strive
To find which ones commute and which do not.

With group and eigenstate, we've learned to fix
Your quantum errors with our quantum tricks.

Other quantum information poetry:


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February 25, 1999