my country has made new progress in quantum error correction research, bringing quantum computers one step closer to practical application.

According to media reports, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has announced significant progress in quantum error correction, achieving "below the threshold, the more it corrects, the more accurate it becomes," based on the superconducting quantum processor "Zu Chongzhi 3.2." This breakthrough lays a crucial foundation for the practical application of quantum computers. The relevant findings were published on December 22nd in the international academic journal *Physical Review Letters*.

In 2025, USTC, based on the 107-qubit "Zu Chongzhi 3.2" quantum processor, proposed and implemented a novel "all-microwave quantum state leakage suppression architecture." The "Zu Chongzhi 3.2" processor achieves comprehensive performance improvements over previous generations in terms of manipulation precision for single-qubit and two-qubit gates, as well as readout accuracy. Building upon this performance improvement, the research team, combining the all-microwave quantum state leakage suppression architecture, implemented surface code logic bits with a code distance of 7. The logic error rate significantly decreased with increasing code distance, demonstrating that the system operates below the error correction threshold and successfully achieving the goal of "the more it corrects, the more accurate it becomes."

Professor Zhu Xiaobo of the University of Science and Technology of China explained that this is similar to a large number of people voting; only when everyone's judgment is accurate will the vote be accurate. Otherwise, as the number of voters increases, the votes become less accurate. Therefore, ensuring that the accuracy of each person's vote is above a certain threshold allows the team's advantage to be fully realized; that is, as the number of qubits increases, the more accurate the correction becomes.

It is reported that achieving quantum error correction "below the threshold" is a core goal that the global quantum computing field has long pursued, and it is also one of the key milestones in verifying whether a quantum computing system can move from prototype to practical application. This new technological approach also provides a more advantageous solution for building mega-qubit quantum computers in the future.