Optimization of Quantum Error Correcting Code under Temporal Variation of Qubit Quality
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Error rates in current noisy quantum hardware are not static; they vary over time and across qubits. This temporal and spatial variation challenges the effectiveness of fixed-distance quantum error correction (QEC) codes. In this paper, we analyze 12 days of calibration data from IBM's 127-qubit device (ibm_kyiv), showing the fluctuation of Pauli-X and CNOT gate error rates. We demonstrate that fixed-distance QEC can either underperform or lead to excessive overhead, depending on the selected qubit and the error rate of the day. We then propose a simple adaptive QEC approach that selects an appropriate code distance per qubit, based on daily error rates. Using logical error rate modeling, we identify qubits that cannot be used and qubits that can be recovered with minimal resources. Our method avoids unnecessary resource overhead by excluding outlier qubits and tailoring code distances. Across 12 calibration days on ibm_kyiv, our adaptive strategy reduces physical qubit overhead by over 50% per logical qubit while maintaining access to 85-100% of usable qubits. To further validate the method, we repeat the experiment on two additional 127-qubit devices, ibm_brisbane and ibm_sherbrooke, where the overhead savings reach up to 71% while still preserving over 80% qubit usability. This approach offers a practical and efficient path forward for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ)-era QEC strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".