Quantum experiment reduces magic-state error by a factor of 40

Researchers report reducing magic-state error by a factor of 40 on a superconducting quantum processor, achieving a state fidelity of 0.9999(1) while retaining 8% of attempts. Their arXiv paper tests magic state cultivation, a method intended to supply resources needed for operations in fault-tolerant quantum computing. The experiment implemented cultivation, including switching into a surface code, and developed a fault-tolerant measurement protocol to bound fidelity. The approach offers an alternative to resource-intensive distillation protocols, but the reported fidelity comes with the limitation that only 8% of attempts were retained.