Mind the gaps: The fraught road to quantum advantage

2025/10/22 by Jens Eisert, John Preskill, Eisert, Jens +1 · 8 voices · 31 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #Error detection and correction #Heuristics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum algorithm #Quantum computer #Radiation Effects in Electronics #Scalability #Verifiable secret sharing #cond-mat.other #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.19928

published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)

openalex publication_date 2025/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, yet substantial gaps separate today's noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices from tomorrow's fault-tolerant application-scale quantum (FASQ) machines. We identify four related hurdles along the road ahead: (i) from error mitigation to active error detection and correction, (ii) from rudimentary error correction to scalable fault tolerance, (iii) from early heuristics to mature, verifiable algorithms, and (iv) from exploratory simulators to credible advantage in quantum simulation. Targeting these transitions will accelerate progress toward broadly useful quantum computing.

Citations

• The Pinnacle Architecture: Reducing the cost of breaking RSA-2048 to 100 000 physical qubits using quantum LDPC codes
• End-to-End Efficient Quantum Thermal and Ground State Preparation Made Simple
• Continuous operation of a coherent 3,000-qubit system
• How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers with less than a million noisy qubits
• Rapid Quantum Ground State Preparation via Dissipative Dynamics
• Dynamics of disordered quantum systems with two- and three-dimensional tensor networks
• Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine
• Roadmap to fault tolerant quantum computation using topological qubit arrays
• Simulating Quantum Circuits with Arbitrary Local Noise Using Pauli Propagation
• Myths around quantum computation before full fault tolerance: What no-go theorems rule out and what they don't
• Quantum error correction below the surface code threshold
• Quantum Algorithm for Systems of Linear Equations with Exponentially Improved Dependence on Precision
• Anyons in an exactly solved model and beyond
• Topological quantum memory
• Simulating physics with computers
• Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons
• Quantum theory, the Church–Turing principle and the universal quantum computer

Cited by

• Cautious optimism for deep parameterized quantum circuits
• Biased-noise qubits: a guide to efficient fault-tolerance using the hierarchy of errors
• Medusa: Detecting and Removing Failures for Scalable Quantum Computing
• Quantum-classical crossover in fault-tolerant quantum dynamics simulation
• A PAC-Bayesian approach to generalization for quantum models
• Systematic Experiment Tracking in Quantum Software: A Case Study of Reservoir Computing with Error Mitigation
• Resolving Structure in Prethermal Floquet Dynamics with Precision Quantum Computation
• Clifford Volume and Free Fermion Volume: Complementary Scalable Benchmarks for Quantum Computers
• Prospects for quantum advantage in machine learning from the representability of functions
• Enabling Technologies for Scalable Superconducting Quantum Computing
• Exploiting Movable Logical Qubits for Lattice Surgery Compilation
• Resource Estimation for VQE on Small Molecules: Impact of Fermion Mappings and Hamiltonian Reductions
• Ultrafast Single Qubit Gates through Multi-Photon Transition Removal
• Reinforcement learning of quantum circuit architectures for molecular potential energy curves
• QASER: Breaking the Depth vs. Accuracy Trade-Off for Quantum Architecture Search
• Constraint-preserving quantum algorithm for the multi-frequency antenna placement problem
• Data-driven adaptive quantum error mitigation for probability distribution
• A measurement-driven quantum algorithm for SAT: Performance guarantees via spectral gaps and measurement parallelization
• An Information-Minimal Geometry for Qubit-Efficient Optimization
• Efficient certification of intractable quantum states with few Pauli measurements
• State preparation and detection for quantum simulation of particle collisions
• Radio-Frequency Side-Channel Analysis of a Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer
• Analytic and Stochastic Approach to Quantum Advantages in Ground State and Quantum State Preparation Problems
• Multi-Qubit Gates by Dynamical Decoupling Implemented with IBMQ and 15NV Center in Diamond
• Approximate sampling from decoded quantum interferometry via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods
• Mitigating Measurement Crosstalk via Pulse Shaping
• Compilation-informed probabilistic logical-error cancellation
• Private Quantum Database
• Phase shadow: A noise-tolerant path to global quantum property estimation
• Towards the Characterization of Logical Errors in Distributed Lattice Surgery
• Measurement-driven quantum advantages in shallow circuits
• The abelian state hidden subgroup problem: Learning stabilizer groups and beyond
• Measurement-Based Loss Tolerance in Graph-GKP Codes through Syndrome-Resolved Pauli-Frame Decoding
• Optimal randomized measurements for a family of non-linear quantum properties
• On the stability to noise of fermion-to-qubit mappings
• Circuit-Level Noise Estimation via Shuttling in Plaquette Circuits
• Driven-dissipative entanglement of distant giant atoms
• Detecting entanglement from few partial transpose moments and their decay via weight enumerators
• Quantum error correction with global control
• Fault tolerant quantum computing [wikipedia]

Discussions

• When and how will quantum computing broadly benefit humanity? Despite exhilarating recent progress, we still don’t know. Here my friend Jens Eisert and I assess the current status and the challenges a [bsky, 76 points, 1 comments]
• Worth a read: arxiv.org/abs/2510.19928 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• #arXiv Mind the gaps: The fraught road to quantum advantage arxiv.org/abs/2510.19928 Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, yet substantial gaps separate today's noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NIS [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• #arXiv Mind the gaps: The fraught road to quantum advantage https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19928 Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, yet substantial gaps separate today's noisy intermediate-scale quan [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• What do you think about this meme on this paper? Please share your opinions. @bullshitquantum.bsky.social @dulwichquantum.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2510.19928 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• As emphasized in a recent paper (arxiv.org/pdf/2510.19928) by John Preskill and Jens Eisert, the path to quantum advantage is subtle, and likely fraught with many technical and conceptual challenges. [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
• NISQ to FASQ arxiv.org/abs/2510.19928 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• # arXiv Mind the gaps: The fraught road to quantum advantage https:// arxiv.org/abs/2510.19928 Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, yet substantial gaps separate today's noisy intermediate-scale qu [mastodon, 0 points, 1 comments]

Related

• 5 Year Update to the Next Steps in Quantum Computing
• Where are we heading with NISQ?
• Myths around quantum computation before full fault tolerance: What no-go theorems rule out and what they don't
• Computer Science Challenges in Quantum Computing: Early Fault-Tolerance and Beyond
• Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine