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arXiv:1607.02579 · Physical Review Letters

Foliated Quantum Error-Correcting Codes

A. Bolt, Guillaume Duclos-Cianci, David Poulin, Thomas M. Stace

Published Aug 10, 2016• 94 citations
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Abstract

We show how to construct a large class of quantum error-correcting codes, known as Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes, from highly entangled cluster states. This becomes a primitive in a protocol that foliates a series of such cluster states into a much larger cluster state, implementing foliated quantum error correction. We exemplify this construction with several familiar quantum error-correction codes and propose a generic method for decoding foliated codes. We numerically evaluate the error-correction performance of a family of finite-rate Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes known as turbo codes, finding that they perform well over moderate depth foliations. Foliated codes have applications for quantum repeaters and fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.117.070501

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We show how to construct a large class of quantum error-correcting codes, known as Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes, from highly entangled cluster states. This becomes a primitive in a protocol that foliates a series of such cluster states into a much larger cluster state, implementing foliated quantum error correction. We exemplify this construction with several familiar quantum error-correction codes and propose a generic method for decoding foliated codes. We numerically evaluate the error-correction performance of a family of finite-rate Calderbank-Steane-Shor codes known as turbo codes, finding that they perform well over moderate depth foliations. Foliated codes have applications for quantum repeaters and fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computation.
Foliated quantum codes are a resource for fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum error correction for quantum repeaters and for quantum computation. They represent a general approach to integrating a range of possible quantum error correcting codes into larger fault-tolerant networks. Here, we present an efficient heuristic decoding scheme for foliated quantum codes, based on message passing between primal and dual code ``sheets.'' We test this decoder on two different families of sparse quantum error correcting code: turbo codes and bicycle codes, and show reasonably high numerical performance thresholds. We also present a construction schedule for building such code states.
Quantum communication and computation is an emerging field in quantum mechanics. There are many promising applications including secure communications, simulation of complex quantum systems or quantum algorithms which perform faster than classical methods. The main barrier to realising these possibilities is coping with the inevitable errors induced by noise and experimental imperfections. Quantum error correction is a process which allows for the storage and retrieval of encoded qubits with high fidelity even in an imperfect environment. Error correction operates by encoding qubit states into a subspace of a larger system of qubits. The presence of errors is detected by performing stabilizer measurements. These measurements do not act on the encoding subspace and the measurement results, or syndrome, can be used to infer errors. The decoding problem is to use syndrome information to find the most likely errors which have occurred. This is performed using classical computing resources. Once the errors have been inferred operations can be applied to the system to counteract their effect. While many quantum error correcting codes are known not all are suitable in a practical setting. When choosing a potential code we must consider the following. Does the construction use simple interactions that can be physically realised? How high is the physical qubit to encoded qubit overhead? Does an efficient decoder exist? Is the encoding scheme scalable and do the error correcting properties improve with scaling? All of these properties are desirable for a practical scheme, though some compromise may be required. In this thesis I show how cluster states can be used as a resource for implementing CSS quantum codes. Additionally I show how these cluster codes can be linked together in a layered fashion to create foliated codes. These foliated codes can be used with any constituent CSS code as a basis for fault tolerant error correction. This process is an extension of Raussendorf’s toric code measurement based processing scheme. I first generalise this measurement based scheme to all CSS quantum codes, which is presented in chapter 3. I then present a novel decoding scheme for foliated turbo codes, chapter 4, and present the decoding performance of some turbo code families in chapter 5. These turbo codes are a class of finite rate codes whose overhead and complexity are flexible. Chapter 6 presents the decoding performance of foliated bicycle codes. The low overhead of physical resources to logical qubits of both these code families make these foliated schemes an attractive alternative to the toric code when considering practical measurement based computing designs with large numbers of encoded qubits.
Flag qubits have recently been proposed in syndrome extraction circuits to detect high-weight errors arising from fewer faults. The use of flag qubits allows the construction of fault-tolerant protocols with the fewest number of ancillas known to date. In this work, we prove some critical properties of Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes constructed from classical cyclic codes that enable the construction of a flag fault-tolerant error correction scheme. We then develop fault-tolerant protocols as well as a family of circuits for flag fault-tolerant error correction and operator measurement, requiring only four ancilla qubits and applicable to cyclic CSS codes of distance 3. The measurement protocol can be further used for logical Clifford gate implementation via quantum gate teleportation. We also provide examples of cyclic CSS codes with large encoding rates.
We present a framework for foliating any Pauli-based quantum error-correcting code over prime-dimensional qudits. For any such code, we obtain a qudit graph state that can be measured to perform fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computing. Such a paradigm is of interest in platforms such as photonics, where measurement-based protocols are natural and high-dimensional states are readily available. We discuss several examples for arbitrary prime dimension ddd, such as the qudit toric code (stabilizer, CSS), the ddd-dimensional perfect [[5,1,3]][[5,1,3]][[5,1,3]] code (stabilizer, non-CSS), and a straightforward ddd-dimensional generalization of the CSS honeycomb code (dynamical, CSS). Under a simple error model, we numerically calculate thresholds for the foliated qudit toric code and demonstrate that they are comparable to the non-foliated version.
In order to build a scalable quantum computer error correction will be required to reduce the impact of errors. Implementing error correction in the framework of measurement based computation manifests itself as the construction of fault tolerant cluster states (FTCSs). While any 2-dimensional stabilizer code can be used to construct a FTCS through the process of foliation, here we find FTCSs that cannot be constructed through foliation of a stabilizer code, and identify new examples of self-dual codes that can still be implemented in a 2-dimensional physical architecture.
In another work [S. Huang and K. R. Brown, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 090505 (2021)] we introduced syndrome extraction methods for Calderbank-Shor-Steane quantum error-correction codes that interpolate between the well-known Shor and Steane syndrome extraction methods. Here we provide detailed proofs of the main theorems and show that up to gate ordering there is a one-to-one correspondence between extraction gadgets and partitions of the parity check matrix. Operationally, all the circuits in our framework can be obtained by merging ancilla qubits of Shor error correction with certain rules, which enables us to design fault-tolerant syndrome extraction circuits for given specific codes. We then apply our construction to the toric code and provide a detailed analysis of the time overhead of fault tolerance. In particular, we construct a syndrome extraction family whose time overhead smoothly varies from Shor to Steane error correction. To understand the potential advantage, we consider two simplified error models: no errors on the ancilla block and uncorrelated errors on the ancilla block. We study the threshold behavior of the family for both error models and show its potential advantage for quantum architectures with long coherence times.