Large-scale quantum computers are waiting in the wings. One of the main reasons we don’t have them yet is because quantum hardware is so noisy. This isn’t the type of noise you’d want to shush in a crowded theater. When it comes to computers, noise means errors that crop up when conditions aren’t perfect.

“We need to find a way to detect errors and correct for them,” said graduate student Evangelos Piliouras. Working with physicist Ed Barnes, Piliouras devised a method to reduce the noise and make quantum computers more noise tolerant. His work was published in npj Quantum Information.

Noise can have real-world implications even in a traditional computer, which uses a stream of electrical signals called bits that represent the 1s and 0s that make up binary code. Noise can knock a 0 into a 1, and a credit card transaction, for instance, might fail.