In this work, we generalize the concept of transversality in quantum error-correcting codes. Unlike conventional methods, we study transversal logical two-qubit gates between two different codes. We consider an application of this concept for quantum networks which consist of multiple intermediate stations equipped with quantum repeaters (QRs). The stations may experience different error models. For instance, in one station, a particular Pauli error may dominate, whereas in its neighboring stations, other types of Pauli errors are more likely. The standard approach of using the same CSS code
Q in different stations does not allow for simultaneously adaptating
Q to be optimized to the errors prevailing in various stations. Considering this fact, we suggest using different CSS codes in each station. In this work, we analyze CNOT and CZ transversality for pairs of CSS codes and provide a complete characterization. We formulate necessary and sufficient conditions for a pair of CSS codes to be CNOT and CZ transversal. In comparison to the conventional approach of having the same CSS code, we show that these conditions are less restrictive.
We consider 2nd generation (2G) Quantum Repeaters (QR) for creating long-distance entanglement in quantum networks. Combining a distance-dependent depolarizing error model with the non-local Bell-state purification procedure required by 2G QRs leads to an error model consisting of correlated and biased errors. To correct correlated errors, non-symmetric CSS codes with joint decoding between stations can be used. The dominating errors are biased, such that different repeater stations suffer from different types of errors. To mitigate this, different quantum codes can be used at the stations, optimized for the specific error model of the station. To comply with the 2G QR procedure, the codes used in neighboring stations must allow for the transversal implementation of non-local logical CNOT gates across the two stations, or alternatively, non-local CZ gates combined with logical Hadamards. We provide a complete characterization of pairs of Calderbank-Steane-Shor (CSS) codes that allow CNOT- or CZ-transversality, and examine an explicit family of mirrored CSS codes allowing CZ-transversality. We verify the Hadamard gate transversality using our framework and show the importance of the mapping matrix. Also, we conclude that using different QECCs can not achieve transversal universal computation with Clifford +
T-gate set. Finally, we study the entanglement generation rate (EGR) in 2G QRs with limited quantum memory, minimizing the number of intermediate stations for a given fidelity and EGR. By simulation we observe that non-symmetric and mirrored structure QECCs outperform the conventional approach of using symmetric CSS codes at the repeater stations.
Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, constructed from nested classical codes
C2⊆C1, are typically optimized for good code parameters. However, practical quantum computing equally demands fault-tolerant logical gates. In this work, we characterize nested pairs
(C1,C2) whose resulting CSS codes realize a target logical diagonal gate via transversal physical
Z-rotations. In doing so, we recover a result of Camps-Moreno et al. that CSS codes can realize only logical single-qubit
Z-rotations and multi-qubit controlled
Z-rotations via transversal physical
Z-rotations. Building on our characterization, we develop the ''appending construction'', that takes as input an
[[n′,k′]] CSS code
Q′ and a target logical
Z-rotation (single-qubit or multi-controlled)
UL, and extends
Q′ by systematically appending
n′′ physical qubits to obtain an
[[n,k]] CSS code
Q with
n=n′+n′′ and
k=k′. The target logical gate
UL is realized in
Q by applying a well-chosen physical transversal
Z-rotation to the
n′′ appended physical qubits. Moreover, any logical gate realized via transversal physical
Z-rotations in the input code
Q′ remains transversally realizable in the extended code
Q. The CSS code
Q may incur a loss in minimum distance, but the loss can be controlled through the parameter choices made in the construction. By repeatedly applying the appending construction, we can extend any CSS code
Q′ to obtain a CSS code
Q that supports fault-tolerant implementations of multiple desired logical
Z-rotations. The cost to be paid for this is the increased physical qubit overhead as the number of target logical gates grows. To illustrate our methodology, we construct CSS code families that transversally realize addressable logical single-qubit and multi-controlled
Z-rotations.
For achieving long-distance quantum communication, Quantum Repeaters (QRs) have to be used, with commu-nication range and reliability increased by using intermediate stations. The physical requirements of second generation QRs may be achievable in the near future. They use Quantum Error Correction Codes (QECC) to protect logical qubits against environmental interaction using physical redundancy. In this work, we study the types of errors that can corrupt quantum codewords in intermediate stations. Our studies show that the errors are distance-dependent, and also consist of correlated errors and biased errors. To mitigate this error model, we use non-symmetric CSS codes as well as mirrored structure coding. We show that using non-symmetric CSS codes results in better performance. Also, we prove the logical CZ gate transversality of the mirrored structure coding. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified by numerical simulations.
We propose fault-tolerant quantum encoders for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) and non-CSS codes over qudits by utilizing
g-partite maximally entangled states. The qudits are grouped into
g contiguous blocks such that entangled states are shared across the blocks, and multiqudit gates are applied locally to restrict the error propagation within each block. We also propose a transversal fault-tolerant block decoder to decode the blocks individually and recover the complete encoded quantum information. The optimum value of
g to obtain an improvement in the probability of error propagation of the proposed encoders against non-fault-tolerant schemes is analytically determined for application in the encoding circuit. The proposed fault-tolerant scheme with entanglement assistance scales linearly with the number of
g-partite entangled states and overcomes the limitations of diminishing coding rates for higher levels of concatenation within the concatenated coding scheme. We validate the proposed ideas by constructing fault-tolerant encoding circuits for the non-CSS
[[5,1,3]]3 code and the
[[7,1,3]]3 CSS code through illustrative examples. We reduced the probability of error propagation from 0.248 to 0.212 for the
[[5,1,3]]3 code and from 0.207 to 0.174 for the
[[7,1,3]]3 code. For example, over
[[100,70]]2 quantum code without any fault tolerance, using three-partite entangled pairs, one can get two orders of improvement (1e-2) in the probability of error propagation compared to the non-fault-tolerant encoder by encoding over 190 physical qubits with the same number of stabilizers.
Physical platforms such as trapped ions suffer from coherent noise that does not follow a simple stochastic model. We view coherent errors as rotations about a particular axis, and observe that since they can accumulate coherently over time, they can be more damaging. It is natural to consider coherent noise acting transversally giving rise to an effective error, which is a
Z-rotation on each qubit by some angle
θ. Rather than addressing coherent noise through active error correction, we instead investigate passive mitigation through decoherence free subspaces. In the language of stabilizer codes, we require the noise to preserve the code space, and to act trivially (as the logical identity operator) on the protected information. Thus, we develop necessary and sufficient conditions for all transversal
Z-rotations to preserve the code space of a stabilizer code. These conditions require the existence of a large number of weight 2
Z-stabilizers, and together, these weight 2
Z-stabilizers generate a direct product of single-parity-check codes. By adjusting the size of these components, we are able to construct a large family of CSS codes, oblivious to coherent noise, that includes the
[[4L2,1,2L]]Shor codes. Given
meven and given any
[[n,k,d]]CSS code, we can construct an
[[mn,k,d′≥d]]CSS code that is oblivious to coherent noise. This result is generalized to stabilizer codes in [Hu, Liang, Rengaswamy, and Calderbank 2020]. The MacWilliams Identities play a central role in the technical analysis, and classical coding theorists may be interested in connections to classical codes with all weights divisible by some integer
d.