Scientists in Australia have developed a new approach to reducing the errors that plague experimental quantum computers; a step that could remove a critical roadblock preventing them scaling up to full working machines.

By taking advantage of the infinite geometric space of a particular quantum system made up of bosons, the researchers, led by Dr. Arne Grimsmo from the University of Sydney, have developed quantum error correction codes that should reduce the number of physical quantum switches, or qubits, required to scale up these machines to a useful size.

“The beauty of these codes is they are ‘platform agnostic’ and can be developed to work with a wide range of quantum hardware systems,” Dr. Grimsmo said.