Erasure Thresholds for Efficient Linear Optics Quantum Computation

Using an error models motivated by the Knill, Laflamme, Milburn proposal for efficient linear optics quantum computing [Nature 409,46–52, 2001], error rate thresholds for erasure errors caused by imperfect photon detectors using a 7 qubit code are derived and verified through simulation. A novel method – based on a Markov chain description of the erasure correction procedure – is developed and used to calculate the recursion relation describing the error rate at different encoding levels from which the threshold is derived, matching threshold predictions by Knill, Laflamme and Milburn [quant-ph/0006120, 2000]. In particular, the erasure threshold for gate failure rate in the same order as the measurement failure rate is found to be above 1.78%.