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arXiv:2012.05842 · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Limitations on Transversal Gates for Hypergraph Product Codes

Simon Burton, Dan E. Browne

Published Nov 30, 2021• 10 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In a fault tolerant quantum computer, quantum codes are expected to serve the conflicting purposes of protecting quantum information while also allowing that information to be manipulated by fault-tolerant gates. We introduce a new technique for placing limitations on such gates, and apply this technique to a class of quantum codes known as hypergraph product codes contained within the vertical sector. These codes are constructed from input which is a pair of classical linear codes, and generalize the Kitaev surface code which is the hypergraph product of classical repetition codes. We provide a necessary condition on these input codes, under which the resulting hypergraph product code has transversal gates limited to the Clifford group. We conjecture that this condition is satisfied by all$[n,k,d]$Gallagher codes with$d\ge 3$and$k\le n/2$. This work is a generalization of an argument due to Bravyi and König, and we also conjecture this is a refinement of the recent notion of disjointness due to Jochym-O’Connoret al.

DOI
10.1109/tit.2021.3131043

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In a fault tolerant quantum computer, quantum codes are expected to serve the conflicting purposes of protecting quantum information while also allowing that information to be manipulated by fault-tolerant gates. We introduce a new technique for placing limitations on such gates, and apply this technique to a class of quantum codes known as hypergraph product codes contained within the vertical sector. These codes are constructed from input which is a pair of classical linear codes, and generalize the Kitaev surface code which is the hypergraph product of classical repetition codes. We provide a necessary condition on these input codes, under which the resulting hypergraph product code has transversal gates limited to the Clifford group. We conjecture that this condition is satisfied by all[n,k,d][n,k,d][n,k,d]Gallagher codes withd≥3d\ge 3d≥3andk≤n/2k\le n/2k≤n/2. This work is a generalization of an argument due to Bravyi and König, and we also conjecture this is a refinement of the recent notion of disjointness due to Jochym-O’Connoret al.
The hypergraph product creates a quantum stabilizer code from two input classical linear codes; a paradigmatic example being the surface code as a hypergraph product of two classical repetition codes. Many properties of the hypergraph product code can be inherited from those of the classical codes such as the code dimension, minimum distance and certain fault-tolerant gadgets. We investigate ways to reduce the number of physical qubits in hypergraph product codes while maintaining some of their useful properties for fault tolerance. We show that the code dimension, canonical logical basis, and minimum distances of the hypergraph product code are preserved through this reduction. We also provide syndrome-measurement schedules that preserve the effective distance as well as examples of reduced hypergraph product codes with parameter improvements such as [ ⁣[610,64,6] ⁣]→[ ⁣[441,64,6] ⁣][\![610,64,6]\!] \rightarrow [\![441,64,6]\!][[610,64,6]]→[[441,64,6]] and [ ⁣[1225,49,11] ⁣]→[ ⁣[931,49,11] ⁣][\![1225,49,11]\!] \rightarrow [\![931,49,11]\!][[1225,49,11]]→[[931,49,11]]. In memory simulations with circuit-level depolarizing noise, the reduced codes can exhibit logical error rates comparable to their unreduced versions at the sampled low physical-error rates, while using fewer physical qubits. Finally, we show how overhead reduction can be compatible with homomorphic measurement gadgets, fold-transversal gates and automorphisms, which extends the savings to logical computation.
Quantum error-correcting codes are essential to the implementation of fault-tolerant quantum computation. Homological products of classical codes offer a versatile framework for constructing quantum error-correcting codes with desirable properties, especially quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes. Based on extensions of the Bravyi--König theorem that encompass codes without geometric locality, we establish a series of general no-go theorems for fault-tolerant logical gates supported by hypergraph product codes. Specifically, we show that non-Clifford logical gates cannot be implemented transversally on hypergraph product codes of all product dimensions, and that the dimensions impose various limitations on the accessible level of the Clifford hierarchy gates by constant-depth local circuits. We also discuss examples both with and without geometric locality which attain the Clifford hierarchy bounds. Our results reveal fundamental restrictions on logical gates originating from highly general algebraic structures, extending beyond existing knowledge only in geometrically local, finite logical qubits, transversal, or 2-dimensional product cases, and may guide the vital study of fault-tolerant quantum computation with qLDPC codes.
Transversal gates are the ideal gates in a fault-tolerant scenario; relatively easy to implement, and minimally error propagating. Their availability will maximise fault tolerant thresholds, enabling universal quantum computation in a wider range of noisy hardware. Transversal gates in quantum low density parity check (qLDPC) codes are largely unstudied, with the early results of Burton & Browne suggesting that transversal non-Clifford gates may be impossible. In this paper, we contradict this expectation with constructions for both hypergraph product codes and balanced product codes, although these first examples have weak properties. We find qLDPC codes with transversal phase gates that have a number of logical qubits that grows linearly with nnn, the number of physical qubits. The distance is highly asymmetric; while the distance against bit flip errors also grows (almost) linearly in nnn, the distance against phase flip errors is limited to O(1)O(1)O(1). Moreover, existing distance rebalancing techniques are one-sided; we show that they only preserve the transversality when rebalancing to increase the asymmetry, not decrease it. We also collate a toolbox of techniques that identify a single transversal gate from which we can individuate a large range of different transversal gates. This is critical when addressing the question of what a transversal phase gate truly means when there are many logical qubits in the system.
Low-space-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation requires not only high-rate quantum error-correcting codes but also space-efficient implementations of logical operations. Transversal and fold-transversal gates are promising since they limit error propagation and require no additional qubits. However, the logical operations they enable are typically restricted, and a central challenge is to construct codes that combine a complete set of logical Clifford gates with favorable code parameters. In this work, we introduce a family of quantum codes with an asymptotically constant encoding rate and sublogarithmically growing stabilizer weight, while supporting the entire logical Clifford group using only transversal and fold-transversal gates. Our construction is based on classical codes whose code spaces are absolutely irreducible Steinberg modules of their Tanner-graph automorphism groups. Taking hypergraph products of these classical codes yields quantum codes for which all logical Clifford operations can be synthesized from a fixed set of transversal and fold-transversal gates. Moreover, the slow growth of the stabilizer weight enables a high error-correcting performance in small instances. These results provide a path toward fault-tolerant quantum computation with low space overhead using transversal and fold-transversal gates.
A fundamental problem in fault-tolerant quantum computation is the tradeoff between universality and dimensionality, exemplified by the the Bravyi-König bound for nnn-dimensional topological stabilizer codes. In this work, we extend topological Pauli stabilizer codes to a broad class of nnn-dimensional Clifford hierarchy stabilizer codes. These codes correspond to the (n+1)(n+1)(n+1)D Dijkgraaf-Witten gauge theories with non-Abelian topological order. We construct transversal non-Clifford gates through automorphism symmetries represented by cup products. In 2D, we obtain the first transversal non-Clifford logical gates including T and CS for Clifford stabilizer codes, using the automorphism of the twisted Z23\mathbb{Z}_2^3Z23​ gauge theory (equivalent to D4\mathbb{D}_4D4​ topological order). We also combine it with the just-in-time decoder to fault-tolerantly prepare the logical T magic state in O(d)O(d)O(d) rounds via code switching. In 3D, we construct a transversal logical T\sqrt{\text{T}}T​ gate in a non-Clifford stabilizer code at the third level of the Clifford hierarchy, located on a tetrahedron corresponding to a twisted Z24\mathbb{Z}_2^4Z24​ gauge theory. Our constructions surpass the Bravyi-König bound by achieving the logical gates in the (n+1)(n+1)(n+1)-th level of Clifford hierarchy in nnn spatial dimension.
The promise of high-rate low-density parity check (LDPC) codes to substantially reduce the overhead of fault-tolerant quantum computation depends on constructing efficient, fault-tolerant implementations of logical gates on such codes. Transversal gates are the simplest type of fault-tolerant gate, but the potential of transversal gates on LDPC codes has hitherto been largely neglected. We investigate the transversal gates that can be implemented in hypergraph product codes, a class of LDPC codes. Our analysis is aided by the construction of a symplectic canonical basis for the logical operators of hypergraph product codes, a result that may be of independent interest. We show that in these codes transversal gates can implement Hadamard (up to logical SWAP gates) and control-Z on all logical qubits. Moreover, we show that sequences of transversal operations, interleaved with error correction, allow implementation of entangling gates between arbitrary pairs of logical qubits in the same code block. We thereby demonstrate that transversal gates can be used as the basis for universal quantum computing on LDPC codes, when supplemented with state injection.