Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: A Small Quantum Computer is Needed to Optimize Fault-Tolerant Protocols   As far as we know, a useful quantum computer will require fault-tolerant
gates, and existing schemes demand a prohibitively large space and time
overhead. We argue that a first generation quantum computer will be very
valuable to design, test, and optimize fault-tolerant protocols tailored to the
noise processes of the hardware. Our argument is essentially a critical
analysis of the current methods envisioned to optimize fault-tolerant schemes,
which rely on hardware characterization, noise modelling, and numerical
simulations. We show that, even within a very restricted set of noise models,
error correction protocols depend strongly on the details of the noise model.
Combined to the intrinsic difficulty of hardware characterization and of
numerical simulations of fault-tolerant protocols, we arrive at the conclusion
that the currently envisioned optimization cycle is of very limited scope. On
the other hand, the direct characterization of a fault-tolerant scheme on a
small quantum computer bypasses these difficulties, and could provide a
bootstrapping path to full-scale fault-tolerant quantum computation.

21
The categories of this paper are: adap-org
6
The categories of this paper are: astro-ph
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
33
The categories of this paper are: plasm-ph
34
The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
35
The categories of this paper are: mtrl-th
1
The categories of this paper are: cs
32
The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
14
The categories of this paper are: math-ph
15
The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
9
The categories of this paper are: nlin
36
The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
12
The categories of this paper are: nucl-th
37
The categories of this paper are: supr-con
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn