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Ben Brown

@benbrown.bsky.social
382 followers 78 following 31 posts

Research scientist at IBM Quantum

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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Oh yeah, I have also heard of it referred to as salami slicing :-)
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
What does LPU stand for here? 'Lowest publishable unit' or something like that? In physics I heard of this referred to as a 'publon'; one quanta of publishable material.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I already thanked my coauthors when I posted about this work when it appeared on the arXiv, but thanks again to them. This ended up turning into something of a monster paper with many different perspectives on the topic.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Not only does it explain the physical processes behind the 2+1D non Clifford gates I worked on earlier in my career, but it also generalises them. We also connect non-Abelian 2D phases to 3D codes with non-Clifford transversal gates. And we show how to decode these gates under local circuit noise.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I am very happy to see our work on non-Clifford gates with 2D non-Abelian topological phases published in PRX journals.aps.org/prx/abstract.... This is definitely among the most exciting projects I have worked on.
journals.aps.org
Universal Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation in 2D without Getting Tied in Knots
Researchers have designed a way to perform complex logic gates in two-dimensional quantum computers by temporarily moving data into an exotic non-Abelian phase. This method provides a path toward larg...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
It was fishy to me that they asked me to click links to view their data. I asked them to just send a pdf, and if they didn't have an academic tutor or someone who knew them personally to endorse them. They both sent a pdf very promptly. I came to your conclusion - hobbyists writing papers with LLMs.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
This never happened to me before, but this week it happened twice - I got cold two emails asking me for an arXiv endorsement. Anyone else seen this? Is it a scam? I don't see what anyone gets out of it other than an opportunity to spam the arXiv.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
If you can set a lower bound on the number of dollars, the you don't know nothing at all. I am not sure you get a dollar for that. Except if this is the case then I don't know if your lower bound really holds, so do I get a dollar?
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
"My concern is mostly about scope and relative impact. The decoder feels quite tied to the BB-code setting.” -An excerpt of the referee report from the QEC workshop for a paper titled "A matching decoder for bivariate bicycle codes"
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Thanks to my collaborators at U Sydney and OIST. This project began last year at a workshop in Kyoto where Jun presented her work on Bacon-Shor board games. I asked if you could use the same trick with the heavy-hex code. She came back the next day with a schedule presented on a WhatsApp sticker.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
In the other arxiv.org/abs/2604.14299 we run numerical simulations of larger instances of the code. We show how different choices of measurement schedules trade off threshold error rates for logical errors in the X and Z bases.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
In one arxiv.org/abs/2604.14296 we implement a distance-5 instance of the code in an experiment using IBM's heron device Pittsburgh. We also show how benchmarking tools such as ACES can produce noise characterisation data that can be used to improve decoder performance.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Two papers out today: a double feature introducing the dynamic compass code arxiv.org/abs/2604.14296 arxiv.org/abs/2604.14299 We find novel measurement schedule for the heavy-hex code to find a 2D code that has a threshold against circuit noise and is readily implemented on the heavy-hex lattice.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
I wrote many papers on this topic now and each one teaches me something new (One highlight is Kaayva's undergraduate work introducing the Möbius strip decoder doi.org/10.1103/PRXQ...). In our new work I learned matching needs to be combined with other decoding methods for better speed and accuracy.
journals.aps.org
Decoder for the Triangular Color Code by Matching on a M\"obius Strip
An efficient matching decoder for the color code with boundaries that corrects high-weight errors is proposed, leading to competitive results of practical relevance.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
A link to Kaavya's work here scirate.com/arxiv/2602.2... and my old work with Dom here journals.aps.org/prresearch/a.... Underlying the idea of matching decoders is that of conservation laws and code symmetries. I wrote a perspective on this idea here ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc....
scirate.com
A matching decoder for bivariate bicycle codes
The discovery of new quantum error-correcting codes that encode several logical qubits into relatively few physical qubits motivates the development of efficient and accurate methods of decoding these...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Some time ago @domwilliamson.bsky.social and I wrote a paper on decoding fracton codes. This gave us the idea to try to extend MWPM decoding to all codes. We didn't get there yet but work led by @kaavyasahay.bsky.social has made great progress showing a matching decoder for bivariate bicycle codes.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I am watching your conspiracy physics video in December, and you asked for a reminder to cancel your Wall Street journal subscription :-)
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Reposted by Ben Brown
Anirban Chowdhury @anchowdhury.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Our team at IBM is looking for interns! If you are interested in researching fault-tolerant quantum algorithms, please apply here: ibmglobal.avature.net/en_US/career...
ibmglobal.avature.net
Intern 2026: Fault-tolerant quantum algorithms
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
The deadline is a soft one but don't wait around either. Send me a message if you have any questions.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Are you a graduate student looking for experience working on the theoretical problems we need to solve to build a quantum computer? We are currently accepting applications for internship positions in the quantum computing theory team at IBM for summer 2026. ibmglobal.avature.net/en_US/career...
ibmglobal.avature.net
Intern 2026: Quantum Computing Theory
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Congratulations!
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
To those that may have noticed v1 on arXiv, the published article comes with an expanded discussion on the results as supplemental information. This new material is also included as an appendix on the second version on arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2411.15035. Thanks to the referees for their reviews.
arxiv.org
Color code with a logical control-$S$ gate using transversal $T$ rotations
The color code has been invaluable for the development of the theory of fault-tolerant logic gates using transversal rotations. Three-dimensional examples of the color code have shown us how its struc...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
We have 3D color codes with transversal T and CCZ gates, so why not a CS gate as well? Here is one such example to fill that gap. I wonder if it is unique. Unlike color codes with T and CCZ gates, I found I needed to use a new boundary that terminates all string logical operators, but no membranes.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
New work just published journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... I was sat on this result for a couple of years but as you can see in the acknowledgements sometimes I need to be told three times to get things done (and sometimes I need to be asked more than three times, sorry @kenbrownquantum.bsky.social)
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
It was great to see you there Ken
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Reposted by Ben Brown
Stephen Bartlett @bartlettquantum.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Excited to share our first major result from our IARPA Entangled Logical Qubits team! arxiv.org/abs/2504.07258 @benbrown.bsky.social @universal-soup.bsky.social @evanhockings.bsky.social @georgianixon.bsky.social
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Lastly, let me mention that many of our gates start and finish with some planar version of the surface code, so our proposal is compatible with conventional surface code quantum computing schemes. That means we can combine our gates with all of its standard Clifford gates to get a universal gate set
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
We also find these gates can be scaled to produce arbitrarily good magic states, as we can correct the non-Abelian anyons that are created by errors using a just in time decoder. That is even if our stabilizer measurements are not completely reliable.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Not only that, but our observation showed us how to do a whole laundry list of non Clifford gates in 2D on all kinds of microscopic lattices. In fact we've already run a small instance of one of these gates experimentally arxiv.org/abs/2305.13581.
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Reposted by Ben Brown
Dom Williamson @domwilliamson.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Are you a fan of fault-tolerant non-Clifford gates on the 2D surface code? Have you been wondering what was really going on in the protocols by Bombín and Brown? We have a new work for you: arxiv.org/abs/2503.15751
arxiv.org
Universal fault tolerant quantum computation in 2D without getting tied in knots
We show how to perform scalable fault-tolerant non-Clifford gates in two dimensions by introducing domain walls between the surface code and a non-Abelian topological code whose codespace is stabilize...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Logic gates can often be understood in terms of topological phases, so I often felt it was a shortcoming of my work on a 2D CCZ gate that I did not see the analogous physical picture. So I am pleased to share our work arxiv.org/abs/2503.15751 where we show the gate was a non-Abelian phase all along!
arxiv.org
Universal fault tolerant quantum computation in 2D without getting tied in knots
We show how to perform scalable fault-tolerant non-Clifford gates in two dimensions by introducing domain walls between the surface code and a non-Abelian topological code whose codespace is stabilized by Clifford operators. We formulate a path integral framework which provides both a macroscopic picture for different logical gates as well as a way to derive the associated microscopic circuits. We also show an equivalence between our approach and prior proposals where a 2D array of qubits reproduces the action of a transversal gate in a 3D stabilizer code over time, thus, establishing a new connection between 3D codes and 2D non-Abelian topological phases. We prove a threshold theorem for our protocols under local stochastic circuit noise using a just-in-time decoder to correct the non-Abelian code.
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Reposted by Ben Brown
Stephen Bartlett @bartlettquantum.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Post selection in QEC is not cheating 🤣, but can be scalable and significantly reduce your resources overheads! Check out our newly published paper in @commsphys.bsky.social rdcu.be/d1LuM, a great collab with Sam Smith and @benbrown.bsky.social @sydneyphysics.bsky.social
rdcu.be
Mitigating errors in logical qubits
Communications Physics - Quantum error correction produces an enormous amount of data about the quantum system, including information about whether an uncorrectable error is likely. In this work...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
Our work, led by Riddhi Gupta, was just published in Nature nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks to my co-authors for all their hard work.
nature.com
Encoding a magic state with beyond break-even fidelity - Nature
A scheme to prepare a magic state, an important ingredient for quantum computers, on a superconducting qubit array using error correction is proposed that produces better magic states than those that ...
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 18/10/2023
Thanks. Think I got it. I only got onto bsky a few days ago and I haven't spent long working out how to navigate around it just yet.
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Ben Brown @benbrown.bsky.social · 17/10/2023
Please add me. Also to the superconducting qubit one I think I saw you mention a few days ago.
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