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arXiv:1811.07835 · Physical Review Letters

Neural Belief-Propagation Decoders for Quantum Error-Correcting Codes

Ye-Hua Liu, David Poulin

Published May 22, 2019• 99 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Belief-propagation (BP) decoders play a vital role in modern coding theory, but they are not suitable to decode quantum error-correcting codes because of a unique quantum feature called error degeneracy. Inspired by an exact mapping between BP and deep neural networks, we train neural BP decoders for quantum low-density parity-check codes with a loss function tailored to error degeneracy. Training substantially improves the performance of BP decoders for all families of codes we tested and may solve the degeneracy problem which plagues the decoding of quantum low-density parity-check codes.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.122.200501

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Belief-propagation (BP) decoders play a vital role in modern coding theory, but they are not suitable to decode quantum error-correcting codes because of a unique quantum feature called error degeneracy. Inspired by an exact mapping between BP and deep neural networks, we train neural BP decoders for quantum low-density parity-check codes with a loss function tailored to error degeneracy. Training substantially improves the performance of BP decoders for all families of codes we tested and may solve the degeneracy problem which plagues the decoding of quantum low-density parity-check codes.
The recent success in constructing asymptotically good quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes makes this family of codes a promising candidate for error-correcting schemes in quantum computing. However, conventional belief propagation (BP) decoding of QLDPC codes does not yield satisfying performance due to the presence of unavoidable short cycles in their Tanner graph and the special degeneracy phenomenon. In this work, we propose to decode QLDPC codes based on a check matrix with redundant rows, generated from linear combinations of the rows in the original check matrix. This approach yields a significant improvement in decoding performance with the additional advantage of very low decoding latency. Furthermore, we propose a novel neural belief propagation decoder based on the quaternary BP decoder of QLDPC codes which leads to further decoding performance improvements.
Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes are promising candidates for error correction in quantum computers. One of the major challenges in implementing QLDPC codes in quantum computers is the lack of a universal decoder. In this work, we first propose to decode QLDPC codes with a belief propagation (BP) decoder operating on overcomplete check matrices. Then, we extend the neural BP (NBP) decoder, which was originally studied for suboptimal binary BP decoding of QLPDC codes, to quaternary BP decoders. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that both approaches as well as their combination yield a low-latency, high-performance decoder for several short to moderate length QLDPC codes.
Abstract To improve the decoding performance of quantum error-correcting codes in asymmetric noise channels, a neural network-based decoding algorithm for bias-tailored quantum codes is proposed. The algorithm consists of a biased noise model, a neural belief propagation decoder, a convolutional optimization layer, and a multi-objective loss function. The biased noise model simulates asymmetric error generation, providing a training dataset for decoding. The neural network, leveraging dynamic weight learning and a multi-objective loss function, mitigates error degeneracy. Additionally, the convolutional optimization layer enhances early-stage convergence efficiency. Numerical results show that for bias-tailored quantum codes, our decoder performs much better than the belief propagation (BP) with ordered statistics decoding (BP + OSD). Our decoder achieves an order of magnitude improvement in the error suppression compared to higher-order BP + OSD. Furthermore, the decoding threshold of our decoder for surface codes reaches a high threshold of 20%.
Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes have emerged as a promising technique for quantum error correction. A variety of decoders have been proposed for QLDPC codes and many utilize belief propagation (BP) decoding in some fashion. However, the use of BP decoding for degenerate QLDPC codes is known to have issues with convergence. These issues are typically attributed to short cycles in the Tanner graph and error patterns with the same syndrome due to code degeneracy. In this work, we propose a decoder for QLDPC codes based on BP guided decimation (BPGD), which has been previously studied for constraint satisfaction and lossy compression problems. This decimation process is applicable to both binary and quaternary BP and it involves sequentially freezing the value of the most reliable qubits to encourage BP convergence. We find that BPGD significantly reduces the BP failure rate due to non-convergence, achieving performance on par with BP with ordered statistics decoding and BP with stabilizer inactivation, without the need to solve systems of linear equations. To explore how and why BPGD improves performance, we discuss several interpretations of BPGD and their connection to BP syndrome decoding.
In this paper, we analyze the performance of neural belief propagation (BP) decoding on the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, compared to the traditional BP algorithm. Previous investigations have shown that assigning pre-trained weights to BP messages can significantly improve the decoding performance in case of high-density parity-check (HDPC) codes, by reducing the negative impact of short cycles. These weights are trained by a neural network whose structure matches the trellis of the decoder. Specifically, we show that medium-density paritycheck (MDPC) codes decoded with neural BP algorithm can achieve lower bit error rate versus HDPC codes with the same codeword length and the same code rate.
Quantum low-density parity check (QLDPC) codes have rapidly developed in the field of quantum error correction in recent years. A variety of quantum code families have emerged from numerous research activities. In this paper, we employ concatenated Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, hypergraph product codes, and Bacon-Shor codes to train belief-propagation (BP) and neural BP (NBP) decoders. At the same time, we employ a concatenation scheme in BP and NBP, the amplified construction of CSS codes is realized, and the training of longer length parameter quantum codes is realized. The numerical results show that the concatenated CSS codes demonstrate better error correction performance compared to both hypergraph product codes and Bacon-Shor codes. In addition, the concatenated CSS codes are trained using the concatenation scheme to improve the error correction performance of the decoder.