What is Quantinuum Helios Color-Code Error Correction (99.9995% logical fidelity per round)?

Quantum computers keep information in qubits, and that information can be damaged by noise, so results can come out wrong. Quantum error correction is a family of techniques that protects quantum information from this noise, by adding extra qubits and encoding the information in an entangled state. This research result is an experiment on Quantinuum's Helios trapped-ion quantum processor using a "color code", one such scheme. It reports a logical error rate of about five errors per million operations, and the remaining errors fell by a factor of about 12 each time the code was made larger (it was tested at three sizes). Quantinuum announced it on October 19, 2026.

Written from primary sources and reference pages, and checked against them by an independent AI fact-checker. Drafted with AI assistance.