Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1908.00147

Quantum Error Correction with the GKP Code and Concatenation with Stabilizer Codes

Yan Wang

Published Jul 31, 2019• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Gottesman, Kitaev and Preskill have proposed a scheme to encode a qubit in a harmonic oscillator, which is called the GKP code. It is designed to be resistant to small shift errors contained in momentum and position quadratures. Thus there's some intrinsic fault tolerance of the GKP code. In this thesis,we propose a method to utilize all the information contained in the continuous shifts, not just simply map a GKP-encoded qubit to a normal qubit. This method enables us to do maximum-likelihood decisions and thus increase fault-tolerance of the GKP code. This thesis shows that the continuous nature of the GKP code is quite useful for quantum error correction.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1908.00147

Related papers

Quantum error correction with the color-Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code

Jiaxuan Zhang, Jian Zhao, Yu-Chun Wu +1 more

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code is an important type of bosonic quantum error-correcting code. Since the GKP code only protects against small shift errors in $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}$ and $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{q}$ quadratures, it is necessary to concatenate the GKP code with a stabilizer code for the larger error correction. In this paper, we consider the concatenation of the single-mode GKP code with the two-dimensional (2D) color code (color-GKP code) on the square-octagon lattice. We use the Steane-type scheme with a maximum-likelihood estimation for GKP error correction and show its advantage for the concatenation. In our main paper, the minimum-weight perfect matching algorithm is applied to decode the color-GKP code. Complemented with the continuous-variable information from the GKP code, the threshold of the 2D color code is improved. If only data GKP qubits are noisy, the threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.59(\overline{p}\ensuremath{\approx}13.3%)$ compared with $\overline{p}=10.2%$ of the normal 2D color code. If measurements are also noisy, we introduce the generalized restriction decoder on the three-dimensional space-time graph for decoding. The threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.46$ when measurements in the GKP error correction are noiseless, and $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.24$ when all measurements are noisy. Lastly, the good performance of the generalized restriction decoder is also shown on the normal 2D color code giving the threshold at $3.1%$ under the phenomenological error model.

arXiv:2112.14447•Physical Review A•Dec 20, 2021•15 citations

Concatenation of the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code with the XZZX surface code

Jiaxuan Zhang, Yu-Chun Wu, Guo‐Ping Guo

Bosonic codes provide an alternative option for quantum error correction. An important category of bosonic codes called the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code has aroused much interest recently. Theoretically, the error correction ability of the GKP code is limited since it can only correct small shift errors in position and momentum quadratures. A natural approach to promote the GKP error correction for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation is concatenating encoded GKP states with a stabilizer code. The performance of the XZZX surface-GKP code, i.e., the single-mode GKP code concatenated with the XZZX surface code is investigated in this paper under two different noise models. Firstly, in the code-capacity noise model, the asymmetric rectangular GKP code with parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ is introduced. Using the minimum weight perfect matching decoder combined with the continuous-variable GKP information, the optimal threshold of the XZZX-surface GKP code reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.67$ when $\ensuremath{\lambda}=2.1$, compared with the threshold $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.60$ of the standard surface-GKP code. Secondly, we analyze the shift errors of two-qubit gates in the actual implementation and build the full circuit-level noise model. By setting the appropriate bias parameters, the logical error rate is reduced by several times in some cases. These results indicate the XZZX surface-GKP codes are more suitable for asymmetric concatenation under the general noise models. We also estimate the overhead of the XZZX-surface GKP code which uses about 291 GKP states with the noise parameter 18.5 dB ($\ensuremath{\kappa}/g\ensuremath{\approx}0.71%$) to encode a logical qubit with the error rate $2.53\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$, compared with the qubit-based surface code using 3041 qubits to achieve almost the same logical error rate.

arXiv:2207.04383•Physical Review A•Jun 9, 2023•16 citations

Entanglement-assisted continuous-variable concatenated codes for encoding qubits or oscillators

Nihar Ranjan Dash, Sanjoy Dutta, R. Srikanth +1 more

Entanglement-assisted (EA) stabilizer codes enhance the rate of error correction in relation to codes with no pre-shared entanglement. Meanwhile, bosonic error-correcting codes, such as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code, can be concatenated with qubit stabilizer codes to significantly reduce the logical failure probability of those stabilizer codes. First, we combine the above two concepts to propose an EA version of the qubit-into-oscillators concatenated code that chains an EA-stabilizer (outer) code with a GKP (inner) code. As an example we present a three-qubit EA-repetition concatenated with a GKP code. Second, we propose an EA version of the non-Gaussian oscillator-into-oscillators concatenated code that chains a GKP (outer) code with an EA-stabilizer (inner) code. As an example we present a GKP code concatenated with a three-qubit EA repetition code that uses two maximally entangled modes (emodes) and suppresses the variances of both position and momentum quadrature errors of a data mode. Furthermore, we generalize the latter example to a family of GKP code concatenated with a $n$-qubit EA repetition code that uses ${n-1}$ emodes and suppresses the variances of both position and momentum quadrature errors of a data mode by a factor ${1/n}$.

quant-pharXiv:2606.09379•Jun 9, 2026•0 citations

Analog Quantum Error Correction with Encoding a Qubit into an Oscillator

Kosuke Fukui, Akihisa Tomita, Atsushi Okamoto

To implement fault-tolerant quantum computation with continuous variables, Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) qubits have been recognized as an important technological element. However, the analog outcome of GKP qubits, which includes beneficial information to improve the error tolerance, has been wasted, because the GKP qubits have been treated as only discrete variables. In this Letter, we propose a hybrid quantum error correction approach that combines digital information with the analog information of the GKP qubits using a maximum-likelihood method. As an example, we demonstrate that the three-qubit bit-flip code can correct double errors, whereas the conventional method based on majority voting on the binary measurement outcome can correct only a single error. As another example, we show that a concatenated code known as Knill's C_{4}/C_{6} code can achieve the hashing bound for the quantum capacity of the Gaussian quantum channel (GQC). To the best of our knowledge, this approach is the first attempt to draw both digital and analog information to improve quantum error correction performance and achieve the hashing bound for the quantum capacity of the GQC.

arXiv:1706.03011•Physical Review Letters•Nov 3, 2017•104 citations

Quantum error correction with the toric Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code

Christophe Vuillot, Hamed Asasi, Yang Wang +2 more

We examine the performance of the single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code and its concatenation with the toric code for a noise model of Gaussian shifts, or displacement errors. We show how one can optimize the tracking of errors in repeated noisy error correction for the GKP code. We do this by examining the maximum-likelihood problem for this setting and its mapping onto a 1D Euclidean path-integral modeling a particle in a random cosine potential. We demonstrate the efficiency of a minimum-energy decoding strategy as a proxy for the path integral evaluation. In the second part of this paper, we analyze and numerically assess the concatenation of the GKP code with the toric code. When toric code measurements and GKP error correction measurements are perfect, we find that by using GKP error information the toric code threshold improves from $10%$ to $14%$. When only the GKP error correction measurements are perfect we observe a threshold at $6%$. In the more realistic setting when all error information is noisy, we show how to represent the maximum likelihood decoding problem for the toric-GKP code as a 3D compact QED model in the presence of a quenched random gauge field, an extension of the random-plaquette gauge model for the toric code. We present a decoder for this problem which shows the existence of a noise threshold at shift-error standard deviation ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}0.243$ for toric code measurements, data errors and GKP ancilla errors. If the errors only come from having imperfect GKP states, then this corresponds to states with just four photons or more. Our last result is a no-go result for linear oscillator codes, encoding oscillators into oscillators. For the Gaussian displacement error model, we prove that encoding corresponds to squeezing the shift errors. This shows that linear oscillator codes are useless for quantum information protection against Gaussian shift errors.

arXiv:1810.00047•Physical Review A•Mar 26, 2019•141 citations

Probabilistic Error Cancellation for Single-Mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill Codes

Victoria Wadewitz, Alessandro Ciani

In order to solve practical problems on a quantum computer, it is necessary to use fault-tolerant quantum error correction schemes to overcome noise: the errors arising from imperfections in physical components. The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code aims at achieving this in a hardware efficient manner by encoding finite-dimensional logical subspaces in the Hilbert space of one or more continuous variable modes. In near term implementations, however, it is not feasible to eliminate errors entirely, so it is natural to also employ alternative error mitigation techniques together with error correction. In this work, we study a quantum error mitigation method known as probabilistic error cancellation in the context of the GKP code. We compare Steane-type and teleportation-based GKP error correction, and calculate the sampling overheads associated with the technique for square and hexagonal GKP codes. We employ the stabilizer subsystem decomposition for GKP codes to obtain an effective logical channel for noisy operations that is used to express the ideal one of a target logical unitary. We consider noise from finite squeezing on the data and the two ancilla modes, needed for error correction, and examine the relationship between the sampling overhead and the noise for different decoding methods. Our results are calculated for single- and two-qubit GKP Clifford gates and one round of error correction, and show the nontrivial combination of error correction and mitigation in continuous variable codes.

quant-pharXiv:2609.17095•Sep 16, 2026•0 citations
Gottesman, Kitaev and Preskill have proposed a scheme to encode a qubit in a harmonic oscillator, which is called the GKP code. It is designed to be resistant to small shift errors contained in momentum and position quadratures. Thus there's some intrinsic fault tolerance of the GKP code. In this thesis,we propose a method to utilize all the information contained in the continuous shifts, not just simply map a GKP-encoded qubit to a normal qubit. This method enables us to do maximum-likelihood decisions and thus increase fault-tolerance of the GKP code. This thesis shows that the continuous nature of the GKP code is quite useful for quantum error correction.
The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code is an important type of bosonic quantum error-correcting code. Since the GKP code only protects against small shift errors in $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{p}$ and $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{q}$ quadratures, it is necessary to concatenate the GKP code with a stabilizer code for the larger error correction. In this paper, we consider the concatenation of the single-mode GKP code with the two-dimensional (2D) color code (color-GKP code) on the square-octagon lattice. We use the Steane-type scheme with a maximum-likelihood estimation for GKP error correction and show its advantage for the concatenation. In our main paper, the minimum-weight perfect matching algorithm is applied to decode the color-GKP code. Complemented with the continuous-variable information from the GKP code, the threshold of the 2D color code is improved. If only data GKP qubits are noisy, the threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.59(\overline{p}\ensuremath{\approx}13.3%)$ compared with p‾=10.2\overline{p}=10.2%p​=10.2 of the normal 2D color code. If measurements are also noisy, we introduce the generalized restriction decoder on the three-dimensional space-time graph for decoding. The threshold reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.46$ when measurements in the GKP error correction are noiseless, and $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.24$ when all measurements are noisy. Lastly, the good performance of the generalized restriction decoder is also shown on the normal 2D color code giving the threshold at 3.13.1%3.1 under the phenomenological error model.
Bosonic codes provide an alternative option for quantum error correction. An important category of bosonic codes called the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code has aroused much interest recently. Theoretically, the error correction ability of the GKP code is limited since it can only correct small shift errors in position and momentum quadratures. A natural approach to promote the GKP error correction for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computation is concatenating encoded GKP states with a stabilizer code. The performance of the XZZX surface-GKP code, i.e., the single-mode GKP code concatenated with the XZZX surface code is investigated in this paper under two different noise models. Firstly, in the code-capacity noise model, the asymmetric rectangular GKP code with parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ is introduced. Using the minimum weight perfect matching decoder combined with the continuous-variable GKP information, the optimal threshold of the XZZX-surface GKP code reaches $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.67$ when $\ensuremath{\lambda}=2.1$, compared with the threshold $\ensuremath{\sigma}\ensuremath{\approx}0.60$ of the standard surface-GKP code. Secondly, we analyze the shift errors of two-qubit gates in the actual implementation and build the full circuit-level noise model. By setting the appropriate bias parameters, the logical error rate is reduced by several times in some cases. These results indicate the XZZX surface-GKP codes are more suitable for asymmetric concatenation under the general noise models. We also estimate the overhead of the XZZX-surface GKP code which uses about 291 GKP states with the noise parameter 18.5 dB ($\ensuremath{\kappa}/g\ensuremath{\approx}0.71%$) to encode a logical qubit with the error rate $2.53\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$, compared with the qubit-based surface code using 3041 qubits to achieve almost the same logical error rate.
Entanglement-assisted (EA) stabilizer codes enhance the rate of error correction in relation to codes with no pre-shared entanglement. Meanwhile, bosonic error-correcting codes, such as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code, can be concatenated with qubit stabilizer codes to significantly reduce the logical failure probability of those stabilizer codes. First, we combine the above two concepts to propose an EA version of the qubit-into-oscillators concatenated code that chains an EA-stabilizer (outer) code with a GKP (inner) code. As an example we present a three-qubit EA-repetition concatenated with a GKP code. Second, we propose an EA version of the non-Gaussian oscillator-into-oscillators concatenated code that chains a GKP (outer) code with an EA-stabilizer (inner) code. As an example we present a GKP code concatenated with a three-qubit EA repetition code that uses two maximally entangled modes (emodes) and suppresses the variances of both position and momentum quadrature errors of a data mode. Furthermore, we generalize the latter example to a family of GKP code concatenated with a nnn-qubit EA repetition code that uses n−1{n-1}n−1 emodes and suppresses the variances of both position and momentum quadrature errors of a data mode by a factor 1/n{1/n}1/n.
To implement fault-tolerant quantum computation with continuous variables, Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) qubits have been recognized as an important technological element. However, the analog outcome of GKP qubits, which includes beneficial information to improve the error tolerance, has been wasted, because the GKP qubits have been treated as only discrete variables. In this Letter, we propose a hybrid quantum error correction approach that combines digital information with the analog information of the GKP qubits using a maximum-likelihood method. As an example, we demonstrate that the three-qubit bit-flip code can correct double errors, whereas the conventional method based on majority voting on the binary measurement outcome can correct only a single error. As another example, we show that a concatenated code known as Knill's C_{4}/C_{6} code can achieve the hashing bound for the quantum capacity of the Gaussian quantum channel (GQC). To the best of our knowledge, this approach is the first attempt to draw both digital and analog information to improve quantum error correction performance and achieve the hashing bound for the quantum capacity of the GQC.
We examine the performance of the single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code and its concatenation with the toric code for a noise model of Gaussian shifts, or displacement errors. We show how one can optimize the tracking of errors in repeated noisy error correction for the GKP code. We do this by examining the maximum-likelihood problem for this setting and its mapping onto a 1D Euclidean path-integral modeling a particle in a random cosine potential. We demonstrate the efficiency of a minimum-energy decoding strategy as a proxy for the path integral evaluation. In the second part of this paper, we analyze and numerically assess the concatenation of the GKP code with the toric code. When toric code measurements and GKP error correction measurements are perfect, we find that by using GKP error information the toric code threshold improves from 1010%10 to 1414%14. When only the GKP error correction measurements are perfect we observe a threshold at 66%6. In the more realistic setting when all error information is noisy, we show how to represent the maximum likelihood decoding problem for the toric-GKP code as a 3D compact QED model in the presence of a quenched random gauge field, an extension of the random-plaquette gauge model for the toric code. We present a decoder for this problem which shows the existence of a noise threshold at shift-error standard deviation ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}0.243$ for toric code measurements, data errors and GKP ancilla errors. If the errors only come from having imperfect GKP states, then this corresponds to states with just four photons or more. Our last result is a no-go result for linear oscillator codes, encoding oscillators into oscillators. For the Gaussian displacement error model, we prove that encoding corresponds to squeezing the shift errors. This shows that linear oscillator codes are useless for quantum information protection against Gaussian shift errors.
In order to solve practical problems on a quantum computer, it is necessary to use fault-tolerant quantum error correction schemes to overcome noise: the errors arising from imperfections in physical components. The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code aims at achieving this in a hardware efficient manner by encoding finite-dimensional logical subspaces in the Hilbert space of one or more continuous variable modes. In near term implementations, however, it is not feasible to eliminate errors entirely, so it is natural to also employ alternative error mitigation techniques together with error correction. In this work, we study a quantum error mitigation method known as probabilistic error cancellation in the context of the GKP code. We compare Steane-type and teleportation-based GKP error correction, and calculate the sampling overheads associated with the technique for square and hexagonal GKP codes. We employ the stabilizer subsystem decomposition for GKP codes to obtain an effective logical channel for noisy operations that is used to express the ideal one of a target logical unitary. We consider noise from finite squeezing on the data and the two ancilla modes, needed for error correction, and examine the relationship between the sampling overhead and the noise for different decoding methods. Our results are calculated for single- and two-qubit GKP Clifford gates and one round of error correction, and show the nontrivial combination of error correction and mitigation in continuous variable codes.