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arXiv:2403.12119 · Quantum

Low-overhead non-Clifford fault-tolerant circuits for all non-chiral abelian topological phases

Andreas Bauer

Published Mar 25, 2025• 5 citations
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Abstract

We propose a family of explicit geometrically local circuits on a 2-dimensional planar grid of qudits, realizing any abelian non-chiral topological phase as an actively error-corrected fault-tolerant memory. These circuits are constructed from measuring 1-form symmetries in discrete fixed-point path integrals, which we express through cellular cohomology and higher-order cup products. The specific path integral we use is the abelian Dijkgraaf-Witten state sum on a 3-dimensional cellulation, which is a spacetime representation of the twisted quantum double model. The resulting circuits are based on a syndrome extraction circuit of the (qudit) stabilizer toric code, into which we insert non-Clifford phase gates that implement the “twist''. The overhead compared to the toric code is moderate, in contrast to known constructions for twisted abelian phases. We also show that other architectures for the (qudit) toric code phase, like measurement-based topological quantum computation or Floquet codes, can be enriched with phase gates to implement twisted quantum doubles instead of their untwisted versions. As a further result, we prove fault tolerance under arbitrary local (including non-Pauli) noise for a very general class of topological circuits that we call 1-form symmetric fixed-point circuits. This notion unifies the circuits in this paper as well as the stabilizer toric code, subsystem toric code, measurement-based topological quantum computation, or the (CSS) honeycomb Floquet code. We also demonstrate how our method can be adapted to construct fault-tolerant circuits for specific non-Abelian phases. In the appendix we present an explicit combinatorial procedure to define formulas for higher cup products on arbitrary cellulations, which might be interesting in its own right to the TQFT and topological-phases community.

DOI
10.22331/q-2025-03-25-1673

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We propose a family of explicit geometrically local circuits on a 2-dimensional planar grid of qudits, realizing any abelian non-chiral topological phase as an actively error-corrected fault-tolerant memory. These circuits are constructed from measuring 1-form symmetries in discrete fixed-point path integrals, which we express through cellular cohomology and higher-order cup products. The specific path integral we use is the abelian Dijkgraaf-Witten state sum on a 3-dimensional cellulation, which is a spacetime representation of the twisted quantum double model. The resulting circuits are based on a syndrome extraction circuit of the (qudit) stabilizer toric code, into which we insert non-Clifford phase gates that implement the “twist''. The overhead compared to the toric code is moderate, in contrast to known constructions for twisted abelian phases. We also show that other architectures for the (qudit) toric code phase, like measurement-based topological quantum computation or Floquet codes, can be enriched with phase gates to implement twisted quantum doubles instead of their untwisted versions. As a further result, we prove fault tolerance under arbitrary local (including non-Pauli) noise for a very general class of topological circuits that we call 1-form symmetric fixed-point circuits. This notion unifies the circuits in this paper as well as the stabilizer toric code, subsystem toric code, measurement-based topological quantum computation, or the (CSS) honeycomb Floquet code. We also demonstrate how our method can be adapted to construct fault-tolerant circuits for specific non-Abelian phases. In the appendix we present an explicit combinatorial procedure to define formulas for higher cup products on arbitrary cellulations, which might be interesting in its own right to the TQFT and topological-phases community.
Topological codes have many desirable properties that allow fault-tolerant quantum computation with relatively low overhead. A core challenge for these codes, however, is to achieve a low-overhead universal gate set with limited connectivity. In this work, we explore a non-Pauli stabilizer code that can be used to complete a universal gate set on topological toric and surface codes in strictly two dimensions. Fault-tolerant syndrome extraction for the non-Pauli code requires mid-circuit XXX corrections, a key difference to conventional Pauli codes. We construct and benchmark a just-in-time (JIT) matching decoder to reliably decide these corrections. Under a phenomenological error model with equally likely physical and measurement errors, we find a high threshold of ≈2.5 %\approx 2.5\,\%≈2.5%, close to the ≈2.9 %\approx 2.9\,\%≈2.9% of a decoder with access to the full syndrome history. We also perform a finite-size scaling analysis to estimate how the logical error rate scales below threshold and verify an exponential suppression in both physical error rate and in the system size. A second global decoding step for ZZZ errors is required and the non-Clifford gates in the circuit reduce the threshold from ≈2.9 %\approx 2.9\,\%≈2.9% to ≈1.8 %\approx 1.8\,\%≈1.8% with a naive decoder. We show how ZZZ decoding can be improved using knowledge of the XXX corrections, pushing the threshold to ≈2.2 %\approx 2.2\,\%≈2.2%. Our results suggest non-Clifford logic in 2D codes could perform comparably to 2D quantum memory. Our formalism for efficient benchmarking and decoding directly generalizes to a broader family of CSS codes whose XXX stabilizers are twisted by diagonal Clifford operators, and spacetime versions thereof, defined by CSS-like circuits enriched by CCZCCZCCZ, CSCSCS, and TTT gates.
We construct a family of infinitely many candidate non-Abelian self-correcting topological quantum memories in D ≥ 5 + 1 spacetime dimensions without particle excitations using local commuting non-Pauli stabilizer lattice models and field theories of Z 2 3 higher-form gauge fields with nontrivial topological action. We call such non-Pauli stabilizer models magic stabilizer codes. The family of topological orders have Abelian electric excitations and non-Abelian magnetic excitations that obey Ising-like fusion rules and non-Abelian braiding, including Borromean ring type braiding which is a signature of non-Abelian topological order, generalizing the dihedral group D 8 gauge theory in ( 2 + 1 ) D . The simplest example includes a non-Abelian self-correcting memory in ( 5 + 1 ) D with Abelian loop excitations and non-Abelian membrane excitations. We prove the self-correction property and the thermal stability and devise a probabilistic local cellular-automaton decoder. We also construct fault-tolerant non-Clifford CCZ logical gate using constant-depth circuits from higher-cup products in the 5D non-Abelian code. The use of higher-cup products and non-Pauli stabilizers allows us to get an O ( n 2 / 5 ) distance overcoming the O ( n 1 / 3 ) distance barrier in conventional topological stabilizer codes, including the 3D color code and the 6D self-correcting color code.
A fundamental problem of fault-tolerant quantum computation with quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes is the tradeoff between connectivity and universality. It is widely believed that in order to perform native logical non-Clifford gates, one needs to resort to 3D product-code constructions. In this work, we extend Kitaev's framework of non-Abelian topological codes on manifolds to non-Abelian qLDPC codes (realized as Clifford-stabilizer codes) and the corresponding combinatorial topological quantum field theories (TQFT) defined on Poincaré CW complexes and certain types of general chain complexes. We also construct the spacetime path integrals as topological invariants on these complexes. Remarkably, we show that native non-Clifford logical gates can be realized using constant-rate 2D hypergraph-product codes and their Clifford-stabilizer variants. This is achieved by a spacetime path integral effectively implementing the addressable gauging measurement of a new type of 0-form subcomplex symmetries, which correspond to addressable transversal Clifford gates and become higher-form symmetries when lifted to higher-dimensional CW complexes or manifolds. Building on this structure, we apply the gauging protocol to the magic state fountain scheme for parallel preparation of O(n)O(\sqrt{n})O(n​) disjoint CZ magic states with code distance of O(n)O(\sqrt{n})O(n​), using a total number of nnn qubits.
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.
This thesis is a collection of ideas with the general goal of building, at least in the abstract, a local fault-tolerant quantum computer. The connection between quantum information and topology has proven to be an active area of research in several fields. The introduction of the toric code by Alexei Kitaev demonstrated the usefulness of topology for quantum memory and quantum computation. Many quantum codes used for quantum memory are modeled by spin systems on a lattice, with operators that extract syndrome information placed on vertices or faces of the lattice. It is natural to wonder whether the useful codes in such systems can be classified. This thesis presents work that leverages ideas from topology and graph theory to explore the space of such codes. Homological stabilizer codes are introduced and it is shown that, under a set of reasonable assumptions, any qubit homological stabilizer code is equivalent to either a toric code or a color code. Additionally, the toric code and the color code correspond to distinct classes of graphs. Many systems have been proposed as candidate quantum computers. It is very desirable to design quantum computing architectures with two-dimensional layouts and low complexity in parity-checking circuitry. Kitaev's surface codes provided the first example of codes satisfying this property. They provided a new route to fault tolerance with more modest overheads and thresholds approaching 1%. The recently discovered color codes share many properties with the surface codes, such as the ability to perform syndrome extraction locally in two dimensions. Some families of color codes admit a transversal implementation of the entire Clifford group. This work investigates color codes on the 4.8.8 lattice known as triangular codes. I develop a fault-tolerant error-correction strategy for these codes in which repeated syndrome measurements on this lattice generate a three-dimensional space-time combinatorial structure. I then develop an integer program that analyzes this structure and determines the most likely set of errors consistent with the observed syndrome values. I implement this integer program to find the threshold for depolarizing noise on small versions of these triangular codes. Because the threshold for magic-state distillation is likely to be higher than this value and because logical CNOT gates can be performed by code deformation in a single block instead of between pairs of blocks, the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum memory for these codes is also the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computation with them. Since the advent of a threshold theorem for quantum computers much has been improved upon. Thresholds have increased, architectures have become more local, and gate sets have been simplified. The overhead for magic-state distillation has been studied, but not nearly to the extent of the aforementioned topics. A method for greatly reducing this overhead, known as reusable magic states, is studied here. While examples of reusable magic states exist for Clifford gates, I give strong reasons to believe they do not exist for non-Clifford gates.
We introduce a family of scalable planar fault-tolerant circuits that implement logical non-Clifford operations on a 2D color code, such as a logical T gate or a logical non-Pauli measurement that prepares a magic | T ⟩ state. The circuits are relatively simple, consisting only of physical T gates, C X gates, and few-qubit measurements. They can be implemented with an array of qubits on a 2D chip with nearest-neighbor couplings and no wire crossings. The construction is based on a spacetime path integral representation of a non-Abelian 2+1D topological phase, which is related to the 3D color code. We turn the path integral into a circuit by expressing it as a spacetime Z X tensor network and then traversing it in some chosen time direction. We describe in detail how fault tolerance is achieved using a “just-in-time” decoding strategy, for which we repurpose and extend state-of-the-art color-code matching decoders.