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arXiv:1503.02065 · New Journal of Physics

Unfolding the color code

Aleksander Kubica, Beni Yoshida, Fernando Pastawski

Published Aug 13, 2015• 179 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The topological color code and the toric code are two leading candidates for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we show that the color code on a d -dimensional closed manifold is equivalent to multiple decoupled copies of the d -dimensional toric code up to local unitary transformations and adding or removing ancilla qubits. Our result not only generalizes the proven equivalence for d = 2, but also provides an explicit recipe of how to decouple independent components of the color code, highlighting the importance of colorability in the construction of the code. Moreover, for the d -dimensional color code with boundaries of distinct colors, we find that the code is equivalent to multiple copies of the d -dimensional toric code which are attached along a -dimensional boundary. In particular, for d = 2, we show that the (triangular) color code with boundaries is equivalent to the (folded) toric code with boundaries. We also find that the d -dimensional toric code admits logical non-Pauli gates from the d th level of the Clifford hierarchy, and thus saturates the bound by Bravyi and König. In particular, we show that the logical d -qubit control- Z gate can be fault-tolerantly implemented on the stack of d copies of the toric code by a local unitary transformation.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083026

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The topological color code and the toric code are two leading candidates for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here we show that the color code on a d -dimensional closed manifold is equivalent to multiple decoupled copies of the d -dimensional toric code up to local unitary transformations and adding or removing ancilla qubits. Our result not only generalizes the proven equivalence for d = 2, but also provides an explicit recipe of how to decouple independent components of the color code, highlighting the importance of colorability in the construction of the code. Moreover, for the d -dimensional color code with boundaries of distinct colors, we find that the code is equivalent to multiple copies of the d -dimensional toric code which are attached along a -dimensional boundary. In particular, for d = 2, we show that the (triangular) color code with boundaries is equivalent to the (folded) toric code with boundaries. We also find that the d -dimensional toric code admits logical non-Pauli gates from the d th level of the Clifford hierarchy, and thus saturates the bound by Bravyi and König. In particular, we show that the logical d -qubit control- Z gate can be fault-tolerantly implemented on the stack of d copies of the toric code by a local unitary transformation.
We introduce a class of three-dimensional color codes, which we call stacked codes, together with a fault-tolerant transformation that will map logical qubits encoded in two-dimensional (2D) color codes into stacked codes and back. The stacked code allows for the transversal implementation of a non-Clifford $\ensuremath{\pi}/8$ logical gate, which when combined with the logical Clifford gates that are transversal in the 2D color code give a gate set that is both fault-tolerant and universal without requiring nonstabilizer magic states. We then show that the layers forming the stacked code can be unfolded and arranged in a 2D layout. As only Clifford gates can be implemented transversally for 2D topological stabilizer codes, a nonlocal operation must be incorporated in order to allow for this transversal application of a non-Clifford gate. Our code achieves this operation through the transformation from a 2D color code to the unfolded stacked code induced by measuring only geometrically local stabilizers and gauge operators within the bulk of 2D color codes together with a nonlocal operator that has support on a one-dimensional boundary between such 2D codes. We believe that this proposed method to implement the nonlocal operation is a realistic one for 2D stabilizer layouts and would be beneficial in avoiding the large overheads caused by magic state distillation.
The two-dimensional color code is an alternative to the toric code that encodes more logical qubits while maintaining crucial features of the Z2×Z2\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​×Z2​ toric code in the long wavelength limit. However its short range physics include single qubit Pauli operations that violate either three or six stabilisers as opposed to the toric code where single qubit Pauli operations violate two or four stabilisers. Exploiting this fact we construct several non-CSS versions of the two-dimensional color code falling into two families - those where either three, four or five stabilisers are violated and those which violate exactly four stabilisers for all the three types of single qubit Pauli operations. These models are not equivalent to the original color code by a local unitary transformation. Nevertheless the code spaces of the CSS and non-CSS versions are related by local unitaries which reflects the fact that their long range physics coincide. This also implies that the non-CSS versions host transversal Clifford gates and hence support fault-tolerant computations. As a consequence of the non-CSS structure, the logical operators are of a mixed type which in some cases include all the three Pauli operators making them potentially useful for protection against biased Pauli noise.
Studying equivalence classes under local unitary transformations is one of the most important approaches for the classification of topological quantum states. It has specially attracted much attention for topological quantum codes due to their application in quantum computing. In particular, It has been shown that each D dimensional color code is local unitary equivalence to many copies of D dimensional toric codes. In this paper, we consider such transformations for two- dimensional (2D) topological codes by introducing GHZ disentanglers. We apply the above disentanglers on qubits corresponding to one particular color in the color code defined on a three-colorable honeycomb lattice. Then, we show that it leads to disentangling other colors because the initial color code is converted to two copies of the triangular toric codes. Furtheremore we extend the above transformations for color codes on different three-colorable lattices. We show that by applying GHZ disentanglers corresponding to one particular color, the color code is converted to two toric codes defined on dual lattices corresponding to other colors. This result is also useful for comparing color codes on different lattices regarding the difference between their dual lattices.
This thesis is devoted to studying a class of quantum error-correcting codes — topological quantum codes. We explore the question of how one can achieve fault- tolerant quantum computation with topological codes. We treat quantum error-correcting codes not only as a compelling ingredient needed to build a quantum computer, but also as a useful theoretical tool in other areas of physics. In particular, we explore what insights topological codes can provide into challenging questions, such as the classification of quantum phases of matter. In this thesis, we focus on a family of topological codes — color codes, which are particularly intriguing due to the rich physics they display and their computational power. We start by introducing color codes and explaining their basic properties. Then, we show how to perform fault-tolerant universal quantum computation with three-dimensional color codes by transverse gates and code switching. We later compare the resource overhead of the code-switching approach with that of a state distillation scheme. We discuss how to perform error correction with the toric and color codes, as well as introduce local decoders for those two families of codes. By exploiting a connection between error correction and statistical mechanics we estimate the storage threshold error rates for bit-flip and phase-flip noise in the three-dimensional color code. We finish by showing that the color and toric code families in d dimensions are equivalent in a sense of local unitary transformations and explore implications of this equivalence.
In recent years, there have been many studies on local stabilizer codes. Under the assumption of translation and scale invariance Yoshida classified such codes. His result implies that translation invariant 2D color codes are equivalent to copies of toric codes. Independently, Bombin, Duclos-Cianci, and Poulin showed that a local translation invariant 2D topological stabilizer code is locally equivalent to a finite number of copies of Kitaev's toric code. In this paper we focus on 2D topological color codes and relax the assumption of translation invariance. Using a linear algebraic framework we show that any 2D color code (without boundaries) is locally equivalent to two copies of a related surface code. This surface code is induced by color code. We study the application of this equivalence to the decoding of 2D color codes over the bit flip channel as well as the quantum erasure channel. We report the performance of the color code on the square octagonal lattice over the quantum erasure channel. Further, we provide explicit circuits that perform the transformation between 2D color codes and surface codes. Our circuits do not require any additional ancilla qubits.
Practical large-scale quantum computation requires both efficient error correction and robust implementation of logical operations. Three-dimensional (3D) color codes are a promising candidate for fault-tolerant quantum computation due to their transversal non-Clifford gates, but efficient decoding remains challenging. In this work, we extend previous decoders for two-dimensional color codes [1], which are based on the restriction of the decoding problem to a subset of the qubit lattice, to three dimensions. Including boundaries of 3D color codes, we demonstrate that the 3D restriction decoder achieves optimal scaling of the logical error rate and a threshold value of 1.55(6)% for code-capacity bit- and phase-flip noise, which is almost a factor of two higher than previously reported for this family of codes [2, 3]. We furthermore present qCodePlot3D, a Python package for visualizing 2D and 3D color codes, error configurations, and decoding paths, which supports the development and analysis of such decoders. These advancements contribute to making 3D color codes a more practical option for exploring fault-tolerant quantum computation.