Operating a logical-qubit size system of superconducting qubits with a heavy-hexagon layout

Recent experimental progress in quantum computing, in different platforms, has enabled the possibility to realize and operate quantum systems of large enough size to support logical qubit encoding and quantum error correction operations. In the field of superconducting qubits in particular, a very interesting topology is the heavy-hexagon. This topology leads to a lower degree connectivity than other popular low-degree parity-check codes, which helps with crosstalk, with little increase in logical error rate. In this talk, we present experiments on small distance logical qubit size systems with the heavy-hexagon topology. We accompany the data with noisy simulations and explore current main hurdles towards full fault-tolerant operation of a logical qubit. *We acknowledge support from IARPA under Contract No. W911NF-16-1-0114.