Innovation Signal 63 (2026) | 5 October 2026
Quantum computers are getting better at using more qubits to reduce errors
Short note, about 5 minutes to read.
What happened
Quantum information is extremely sensitive to disturbances, making errors one of the biggest obstacles to building larger quantum computers.
One way to protect it is to spread information across several physical qubits so that errors can be detected and corrected (quantum error correction). The protected information created in this way is known as a logical qubit.
The idea is not new. What is changing is the growing experimental evidence that adding physical qubits in this way can actually make logical information more reliable.
Quantum error correction in principle → small experimental demonstrations → systems increasingly showing that additional physical qubits can reduce logical errors
Researchers at Harvard University demonstrated repeated error correction using arrays of neutral atoms, showing that increasing the protection around logical information could reduce its errors.
Separately, researchers at MIT and Caltech demonstrated another approach using a trapped ion. Active error correction reduced errors by up to 2.2 times compared with the unprotected version.
Together, the experiments show the same important behaviour through different physical approaches: additional hardware can be used to make quantum information more reliable.
Why this matters
Larger quantum computers will need to carry out complex calculations without small errors overwhelming the result.
If protected quantum information can remain dependable as systems grow, researchers could have a more practical route towards computations that require larger and more capable machines.
Who should care
- Quantum computing companies and researchers
- Semiconductor and quantum hardware companies
- Cloud and computing infrastructure providers
- Governments funding quantum technology programmes
- Industries exploring future quantum-computing applications
- Investors tracking emerging computing technologies
What could change over the next 2 to 3 years
The next test will be whether the same improvement continues as researchers build larger systems and protect quantum information for longer.
Evidence that reliability continues to improve as systems grow would strengthen the case that this approach can eventually support much larger quantum computers.
What might block this
Protecting quantum information requires additional physical hardware and increasingly complex systems to control it.
As machines grow, keeping all those components accurate and stable could become difficult. The recent experiments therefore do not yet show that the approach can work reliably at the scale needed for large, useful quantum computers.
Why I am sharing this
For quantum computing, adding more hardware has historically created more opportunities for things to go wrong.
The emerging possibility is more interesting: some of that additional hardware could increasingly become part of how quantum computers overcome the errors that come with getting larger.
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Archive Tags
Quantum Computing · Quantum Error Correction · Logical Qubits · Quantum Hardware