DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-18 are currently pending in the application and have been examined.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 01/10/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-14 and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ashikhmin (US-20140365843), hereinafter Ashikhmin, in view of Chamberland et al. (US-20210125094), hereinafter Chamberland.
Claim 1:
Ashikhmin teaches method for quantum error correction on a quantum computer (Abstract), the quantum computer comprising one or more syndrome qubits and one or more data qubits (Abstract, Fig. 1 and discussion therein, ¶ [0008]), the method comprising:
(a) performing one or more measurements of said one or more syndrome qubits (¶¶ [0007]-[0008]);
(b) (ii) one or more weighted edges representing one or more patterns of erroneous events (¶¶ [0037]-[0043]);
(d) clustering procedure with a message-passing subroutine (¶¶ [0021]-[0022]);
(e) identifying at least a subset of said one or more data qubits for correction, wherein said subset is identified based at least part on said group of selected edges (¶¶ [0016]-[0017], [0033], [003]5-[0054]); and
(f) prescribing a recovery operation for quantum error correction based at least in part on said subset of data qubits (¶¶ [0016]-[0017]).
Ashikhmin does not explicitly teach (b) obtaining an indication of a vertex-colored graph, said vertex-colored graph having: (i) one or more vertices, wherein said one or more vertices are each: representative of a location of a syndrome qubit within said syndrome qubits and a measurement time or representative of a boundary of a color code; (c) forming a group of marked vertices from said one or more vertices of said vertex-colored graph based at least in part on said one or more measurements; (d) forming a group of selected edges based at least in part on use of a clustering procedure with a message-passing subroutine involving a plurality of marked vertices of said group of marked vertices;. However, Chamberland teaches in an analogous art (b) obtaining an indication of a vertex-colored graph (¶¶ [0041], [0054]-[0058]), said vertex-colored graph having: (i) one or more vertices, wherein said one or more vertices are each: representative of a location of a syndrome qubit within said syndrome qubits (Abstract, Figs. 2-3b, 5a-5b, 7, 11 and discussion therein, ¶ [0006]) and a measurement time or representative of a boundary of a color code (¶¶ [0041], [0054]-[0058]), and (ii) one or more weighted edges representing one or more patterns of erroneous events; (c) forming a group of marked vertices from said one or more vertices of said vertex-colored graph based at least in part on said one or more measurements (¶¶ [0041], [0054]-[0058], [0010]); (d) forming a group of selected edges based at least in part on use of a clustering procedure with a message-passing subroutine involving a plurality of marked vertices of said group of marked vertices (¶¶ [0054]-[0058]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed invention to modify Ashikhmin’s method for quantum error correction to add the steps that Chamberland provides. The artisan would be motivated to do so because it would advance Ashikhmin’s method for quantum error correction.
Claim 2:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches weights of said one or more weighted edges are representative of the probabilities of said one or more patterns of erroneous events. (Chamberland, ¶ [104]).
Claim 3:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches receiving a selection of weights of said one or more weighted edges from a user input (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0047]-[0048]).
Claim 4:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches selecting weights of said one or more weighted edges using a noise channel from experiments. (Chamberland, ¶ [104]).
Claim 5:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches selecting weights of said one or more weighted edges using a machine learning method. (Chamberland, ¶ [0042]).
Claim 6:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches said color code further comprises one or more flag qubits, further wherein (a) comprises performing measurements of said one or more flag qubits and said syndrome qubits. flag qubits (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0001], [0003]-[0007]).
Claim 7:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches modifying weights of said one or more weighted edges using results of said measurements of said one or more flag qubits. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0001], [0003]-[0007]).
Claim 8:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches said modifying of said weights of said one or more weighted edges comprises updating a set of probabilities of one or more patterns of erroneous events using said measurements of said one or more flag qubits. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0001], [0003]-[0007]).
Claim 9:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches a flag qubit measurement of said measurements of said one or more flag qubits indicates a fault occurring within a plaquette which contains said flag qubit. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0001], [0003]-[0007]).
Claim 10:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches said vertex-colored graph comprises three colors inherited from a color code plaquette. (Chamberland, ¶ [0042]).
Claim 11:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches (d) comprises for each pair of colors of said three colors:(i) obtaining an indication of a subgraph having vertices of said colors of said pair; and(ii) applying said clustering procedure with said message-passing subroutine to said subgraph to solve a minimum-weight perfect matching problem to select edges. (Ashikhmin, ¶ [0057]).
Claim 12:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches at (ii) each of said vertices representative of said boundary of said color code is used. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0041], [0054]-[0058]).
Claim 13:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches said group of selected edges form cycles or form strings with endpoints being vertices representative of a boundary of said color code. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0041], [0093]).
Claim 14:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches weights of said one or more weighted edges are approximated.
Claim 16:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches a system for quantum error correction using a clustering procedure with a message- passing subroutine for a color code, the system comprising:(a) a non-classical computer having (i) a quantum chip comprising a color code comprising one or more syndrome qubits, one or more data qubits, and (ii) a control readout system;(b) a digital computer operatively coupled to the quantum chip, the digital computer comprising a memory having instructions to at least instruct said quantum computer to perform one or more measurements of said one or more syndrome qubits; obtain an indication of a vertex-colored graph; form a group of marked vertices from said vertex-colored graph; form a group of selected edges; form a set of identified data qubits; prescribe a recovery operation for quantum error correction; and instruct said quantum chip to carry-out said recovery operation as per the rejection of claim 1, since claim 16 recites similar limitations as claim 1.
Claim 17:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches said quantum chip further comprises one or more flag qubits. (Chamberland, ¶¶ [0001], [0003]-[0007]).
Claim 18:
Ashikhmin in view of Chamberland teaches a processing unit operatively coupled with said quantum computer and said digital computer, said processing unit comprising at least one member of the group consisting of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a graphics processing unit (GPU), a tensor processing unit (TPU), and a tensor streaming processor (TSP). (Ashikhmin, ¶ [0105]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 15 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Barber et al. (US-20240169246) teaches A computer-implemented method for use in decoding syndromes of a quantum error correction code, the syndromes comprising measurement data from a quantum computer comprising a plurality of syndrome qubits and a plurality of data qubits. The method comprises: processing the syndromes to identify defects; recording, in a data structure, respective locations for each defect; and determining a respective radius, for each respective defect, of a ball surrounding the respective location of the respective defect, and recording each respective radius with its respective location in the data structure, wherein each respective radius is determined by iteratively increasing a length of the respective radius until each respective radius defines a ball touching or overlapping at least one other ball surrounding another of the respective locations, such that each respective location belongs to a cluster consisting of an even number of the locations of the defects; wherein the data structure thereby enables decoding of the quantum error correction code. (Abstract).
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/JOHN J TABONE JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2111 02/06/2026