Lazy people in quantum computing use the term "fault-tolerant" to mean "I don't want to think about errors". Unfortunately for these magical thinkers, QEC will not make error rates go to zero, except in the asymptotic limit. For those of us who have to live with finite numbers like 7 or 144, logical operations on logical qubits will always have errors. If QEC is working correctly, these errors will be rarer than the physical ones, but also weirder. So you'd better understand them if you want your "fault-tolerant" quantum computer to actually work.
Fortunately my #quantinuum colleagues Matt Girling, Ben Criger, and Cristina Cirstoiu have put the effort in to start understanding a problem that many others don't even realise exists. Check it out:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08188
#quantum #quantumcomputing #qec