The physical symmetries of a system play a central role in quantum error correction. In this work we encode a qubit in a collection of systems with angular momentum symmetry (spins), extending the tools developed by Gross [J. A. Gross, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 010504 (2021)] for single large spins. By considering large spins present in atomic systems and focusing on their collective symmetric subspace, we develop codes with octahedral symmetry capable of correcting errors up to second order in angular momentum operators. These errors include the most physically relevant noise sources such as microwave control errors and optical pumping. We additionally explore qubit codes that exhibit distance scaling commensurate with the surface code while permitting transversal single-qubit Clifford operations.
The physical symmetries of a system play a central role in quantum error correction. In this work we encode a qubit in a collection of systems with angular momentum symmetry (spins), extending the tools developed by Gross [J. A. Gross, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 010504 (2021)] for single large spins. By considering large spins present in atomic systems and focusing on their collective symmetric subspace, we develop codes with octahedral symmetry capable of correcting errors up to second order in angular momentum operators. These errors include the most physically relevant noise sources such as microwave control errors and optical pumping. We additionally explore qubit codes that exhibit distance scaling commensurate with the surface code while permitting transversal single-qubit Clifford operations.
I present a new approach for designing quantum error-correcting codes guaranteeing a physically natural implementation of Clifford operations. Inspired by the scheme put forward by Gottesman, Kitaev, and Preskill for encoding a qubit in an oscillator in which Clifford operations may be performed via Gaussian unitaries, this approach yields new schemes for encoding a qubit in a large spin in which single-qubit Clifford operations may be performed via spatial rotations. I construct all possible examples of such codes, provide universal-gate-set implementations using quadratic angular-momentum Hamiltonians, and derive criteria for when these codes exactly correct physically relevant errors.
Quantum error correction (QEC) is indispensable for scalable quantum computing, but implementing it with minimal hardware overhead remains a central challenge. Large spin systems with collective degrees of freedom offer a promising route to reducing the control complexity of qubit architectures while retaining a large Hilbert space for fault-tolerant encoding. However, existing proposals for logical gates and QEC in spin ensembles generally rely on inefficient higher-order interactions. Here we introduce spin-N-Cat codes, which encode logical qubits in superpositions of spin-coherent states and generalize bosonic Cat codes to the modular subspaces of permutationally symmetric spin ensembles. The code corrects collective and individual dephasing, excitation, and decay errors. We also present an efficient physical realization in central-spin systems, such as a quantum dot, where encoding, decoding, and a universal, fault-tolerant, and bias-preserving gate set are implemented using only first-order interactions. Numerical simulations demonstrate high logical fidelity under dephasing and excitation-decay noise, independent of noise bias, and that full QEC cycles are feasible with realistic microscopic parameters. For the large collective spins available in quantum dots, this translates into a substantial extension of coherence time. Our results establish spin-N-Cat codes as a scalable, hardware-efficient approach to QEC in spin-based quantum architectures.
We construct a fault-tolerant quantum error-correcting protocol based on a qubit encoded in a large spin qudit using a spin-cat code, analogous to the continuous-variable cat encoding. With this, we can correct the dominant error sources, namely processes that can be expressed as error operators that are linear or quadratic in the components of angular momentum. Such codes tailored to dominant error sources can exhibit superior thresholds and lower resource overheads when compared to those designed for unstructured noise models. A key component is the gate that preserves the rank of spherical tensor operators. Categorizing the dominant errors as phase and amplitude errors, we demonstrate how phase errors, analogous to phase-flip errors for qubits, can be effectively corrected. Furthermore, we propose a measurement-free error-correction scheme to address amplitude errors without relying on syndrome measurements. Through an in-depth analysis of logical gate errors, we establish that the fault-tolerant threshold for error correction in the spin-cat encoding surpasses that of standard qubit-based encodings. We consider a specific implementation based on neutral-atom quantum computing, with qudits encoded in the nuclear spin of 87 Sr , and show how to generate the universal gate set, including the rank-preserving gate, using quantum control and the Rydberg blockade. These findings pave the way for encoding a qubit in a large spin with the potential to achieve fault tolerance, high threshold, and reduced resource overhead in quantum information processing. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We develop quantum information processing primitives for the planar rotor, the state space of a particle on a circle. The n-rotor Clifford group, $\text{U}{(1)}^{n(n+1)/2}\ensuremath{\rtimes}{\text{GL}}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$, is represented by continuous U(1) gates generated by polynomials quadratic in angular momenta, as well as discrete GLn(Z) gates generated by momentum sign-flip and sum gates. Our understanding of this group allows us to establish connections between homological rotor error-correcting codes [Vuillot, Ciani, and Terhal, Commun. Math. Phys. 405, 53 (2024)] and oscillator quantum codes, including Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes and rotation-symmetric bosonic codes. Inspired by homological rotor codes, we provide a systematic construction of multimode rotation-symmetric bosonic codes by making a parallel between oscillator Fock states and rotor states with fixed non-negative angular momentum. This family of homological number-phase codes protects against dephasing and changes in occupation number. Encoding and decoding circuits for these codes can be derived from the corresponding rotor Clifford operations. As a result of independent interest, we show how to nondestructively measure the oscillator phase using conditional occupation-number addition and postselection. We also outline several rotor and oscillator varieties of the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill-stabilizer codes [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 080503 (2020).].
Code switching moves an encoded qubit between two codes whose transversal gates together are universal, but the switching operation itself is usually not transversal and can spread a single fault into an uncorrectable error. We study switching between two permutation-invariant codes on the same qubits, one with transversal Clifford gates and one with transversal gates from the non-Clifford binary icosahedral group. Both are compatible with transversal X, Z, and F=HS†, and the encoders with this property form a small linear space. We show that its codes of distance at least three are cut out by at most two quadratic equations, and that all of them have the same error geometry in the sense that their single-qubit error states have the same inner products. It follows that a switching unitary commuting with qubit permutations and with the shared transversal gates at every instant, and tolerating one single-qubit fault at an unknown time, exists if and only if the two codes are joined by a continuous path of distance-three codes. Such a switch can be made error transparent, so that a fault at any moment reaches the target code as the same single-qubit error. For real encoders, the distance-three codes are the solutions of a single quadratic equation, and on thirteen qubits, they form an explicit circle through two Clifford codes and an icosahedral code. We construct the switching unitary along this circle as a collective operator, leaving its synthesis into physical control open, and verify that its recovery infidelity per fault is at machine precision, whereas two natural alternatives leave average infidelities of 0.13 and 0.85. A survey over odd qubit numbers up to 29 lists where such switches exist.
A common approach to studying the performance of quantum error correcting codes is to assume independent and identically distributed single-qubit errors. However, the available experimental data shows that realistic errors in modern multi-qubit devices are typically neither independent nor identical across qubits. In this work, we develop and investigate the properties of topological surface codes adapted to a known noise structure by Clifford conjugations. We show that the surface code locally tailored to non-uniform single-qubit noise in conjunction with a scalable matching decoder yields an increase in error thresholds and exponential suppression of sub-threshold failure rates when compared to the standard surface code. Furthermore, we study the behaviour of the tailored surface code under local two-qubit noise and show the role that code degeneracy plays in correcting such noise. The proposed methods do not require additional overhead in terms of the number of qubits or gates and use a standard matching decoder, hence come at no extra cost compared to the standard surface-code error correction.