Quantum computers often manipulate physical qubits encoded on two-level quantum systems. Bosonic qubit codes depart from this idea by encoding information in a well-chosen subspace of an infinite-dimensional Fock space. This larger physical space provides a natural protection against experimental imperfections and allows bosonic codes to circumvent no-go results that apply to states constrained by a 2-dimensional Hilbert space. A bosonic qubit is usually defined in a single bosonic mode but it makes sense to look for multimode versions that could exhibit better performance.In this work, building on the observation that the cat code lives in the span of coherent states indexed by a finite subgroup of the complex numbers, we consider a two-mode generalisation living in the span of 24 coherent states indexed by the binary tetrahedral group 2 T of the quaternions. The resulting 2 T -qutrit naturally inherits the algebraic properties of the group 2 T and appears to be quite robust in the low-loss regime. We initiate its study and identify stabilisers as well as some logical operators for this bosonic code.
Quantum computers often manipulate physical qubits encoded on two-level quantum systems. Bosonic qubit codes depart from this idea by encoding information in a well-chosen subspace of an infinite-dimensional Fock space. This larger physical space provides a natural protection against experimental imperfections and allows bosonic codes to circumvent no-go results that apply to states constrained by a 2-dimensional Hilbert space. A bosonic qubit is usually defined in a single bosonic mode but it makes sense to look for multimode versions that could exhibit better performance.In this work, building on the observation that the cat code lives in the span of coherent states indexed by a finite subgroup of the complex numbers, we consider a two-mode generalisation living in the span of 24 coherent states indexed by the binary tetrahedral group 2 T of the quaternions. The resulting 2 T -qutrit naturally inherits the algebraic properties of the group 2 T and appears to be quite robust in the low-loss regime. We initiate its study and identify stabilisers as well as some logical operators for this bosonic code.
Bosonic codes offer a promising approach towards hardware-efficient fault tolerance, with many leading examples such as the cat-code and the GKP code organized by an underlying symmetry. We build on a representation-theoretic framework of quantum error correction to formalize the construction and analysis of multimode symmetric bosonic codes, focusing on finite groups. Here, a physical, logical representation and an initial seed state together define the codewords via a covariant encoding. A central observation is that QEC matrices can be viewed as morphisms of group representations, so that Schur's lemma forces entire irreducible representations blocks to vanish. We recover several known single- and two-mode bosonic codes and build and analyze the error protection capabilities of three codes based on finite subgroups of SU(2). We analyze the impact of reducibility of the logical representation and optimize the seed state using the near-optimal fidelity.
While 2-level systems, aka qubits, are a natural choice to perform a logical quantum computation, the situation is less clear at the physical level. Encoding information in higher-dimensional physical systems can indeed provide a first level of redundancy and error correction that simplifies the overall fault-tolerant architecture. A challenge then is to ensure universal control over the encoded qubits. Here, we explore an approach where information is encoded in an irreducible representation of a finite subgroup of U ( 2 ) through an inverse quantum Fourier transform. We illustrate this idea by applying it to the real Pauli group ⟨ X , Z ⟩ in the bosonic setting. The resulting two-mode Fourier cat code displays good error correction properties and admits an experimentally-friendly universal gate set that we discuss in detail.
Tiger codes form a family of multimode bosonic quantum codes that unify several previously known constructions, including cat, paircat, and the two-mode binomial code. In this work, we give a rigorous algebraic treatment of these codes. Starting from a kernel definition of the codespace, we prove that the annihilation-type constraints admit a finite generating set, construct an explicit orthonormal basis, and show that the logical structure of the code is governed by the homology of an underlying chain complex, as expected in the original work on Tiger codes of Xu et al. We then develop a Fourier transform over the codespace to prove that the span of phase-rotated projected coherent states is dense therein, and to yield dual X- and Z-type descriptions of the code. We further extend the framework to non-linear number constraints, encompassing codes such as the four-legged cat or the repetition cat code. Finally, we investigate the implementation of logical operations. We first generalise the construction of logical Pauli operators proposed by Xu et al. to arbitrary logical spaces, and then construct non-Clifford gates using physical polynomial phase rotations of the form eiP(n^). We derive criteria on the real polynomial P which, for positive single-logical-qubit Tiger codes satisfying an additional sign assumption, such as the paircat code, characterise the polynomials P that preserve the codespace by decomposing them into a family of univariate polynomials. Through this decomposition, we relate the degrees of the resulting components to the induced logical action in the Clifford hierarchy. These results establish Tiger codes as a mathematically robust framework for describing a broad class of bosonic encodings.
Continuous-variable cat codes are encodings into a single photonic or phononic mode that offer a promising avenue for hardware-efficient fault-tolerant quantum computation. Protecting information in a cat code requires measuring the mode’s occupation number modulo two, but this can be relaxed to a linear occupation-number constraint using the alternative two-mode pair-cat encoding. We construct multimode codes with similar linear constraints using any two integer matrices satisfying a Calderbank-Shor-Steane-like homological condition of a quantum rotor code. Just like the pair-cat code, syndrome extraction can be performed in tandem with stabilizing dissipation using current superconducting-circuit designs. The framework includes codes with various finite- or infinite-dimensional code spaces and codes with finite or infinite Fock-state support. It encompasses two-component cat, pair-cat, dual-rail, two-mode binomial, various bosonic repetition codes, and aspects of χ -squared encodings, while also yielding codes from homological products, lattices, generalized coherent states, and algebraic varieties. Among our examples are analogs of repetition codes, the Shor code, and a surface-code-like construction that is not a concatenation of a known cat code with the qubit surface code. Code words are coherent states projected into a Fock-state subspace defined by an integer matrix, and their overlaps are governed by Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky hypergeometric functions.
Given some group G of logical gates, for instance the Clifford group, what are the quantum encodings for which these logical gates can be implemented by simple physical operations, described by some physical representation of G? We study this question by constructing a general form of such encoding maps. For instance, we recover that the ⟦5,1,3⟧ and Steane codes admit transversal implementations of the binary tetrahedral and binary octahedral groups, respectively. For bosonic encodings, we show how to obtain the GKP and cat qudit encodings by considering the appropriate groups, and essentially the simplest physical implementations. We further illustrate this approach by introducing a two-mode bosonic code defined from a constellation of 48 coherent states, for which all single-qubit Clifford gates correspond to passive Gaussian unitaries.
We present a systematic study of Schrödinger cat codes constructed from Kerr-type coherent states, including displaced Kerr coherent states and Barut--Girardello Kerr coherent states, each admitting two distinct families determined by the sign of the Kerr nonlinearity. By tuning the Kerr parameter and coherent-state amplitude, these states interpolate between su(2), su(1,1) coherent states, providing a unified and versatile foundation for this type of bosonic quantum error correction. Unlike standard two-component Schrödinger cat codes, where a single photon-loss event induces an uncorrectable bit-flip, the nonlinear phase-space structure of Kerr cat states enables simultaneous detection and correction of both photon-loss and dephasing errors within a unified recovery framework, with optimal recovery operations determined via convex optimization. We demonstrate that Kerr cat encodings significantly outperform conventional cat codes under combined loss and dephasing noise, and that judicious parameter optimization can suppress both error channels to a level that reduces the overhead of additional error correction layers. We further show that Kerr-deformed coherent-state manifolds under engineered two-photon driving emerge as effective steady states of driven-dissipative dynamics, with single-photon decoherence strongly suppressed and leakage outside the protected manifold appearing only as higher-order corrections in the deformation strength. Our extended formalism identifies generalized Kerr Schrödinger cat codes as promising candidates for fault-tolerant bosonic quantum computation in experimental platforms such as nonlinear photonics.