While stabilizer tableaus have proven exceptionally useful as a descriptive tool for additive quantum codes, they offer little guidance for concrete constructions or coding algorithm analysis. We introduce a representation of stabilizer codes as graphs with certain structures. Specifically, the graphs take a semi-bipartite form where input nodes map to output nodes, such that output nodes may connect to each other but input nodes may not. Intuitively, the graph's input-output edges represent information propagation of the encoder, while output-output edges represent the code's entanglement. We prove that this graph representation is in bijection with tableaus and give an efficient compilation algorithm that transforms tableaus into graphs. We show that this map is efficiently invertible, which gives a universal recipe for code construction by finding graphs with nice properties. The graph representation gives insight into both code construction and algorithms. To the former, we argue that graphs provide a flexible platform for building codes. We construct several constant-size codes and several infinite code families. We also use graphs to extend the quantum Gilbert-Varshamov bound to a three-way distance-rate-weight trade-off. To the latter, we show that key coding algorithms, distance approximation, weight reduction, and decoding, are unified as instances of a single optimization game on a graph. Moreover, key code properties such as distance, weight, and encoding circuit depth, are all controlled by the graph degree. We give efficient algorithms for producing encoding circuits whose depths scale with the degree and for implementing certain logical diagonal and Clifford gates with reduced depth. Finally, we find an efficient decoding algorithm for certain classes of graphs. These results give evidence that graphs are useful for the study of quantum computing and its implementations.
While stabilizer tableaus have proven exceptionally useful as a descriptive tool for additive quantum codes, they offer little guidance for concrete constructions or coding algorithm analysis. We introduce a representation of stabilizer codes as graphs with certain structures. Specifically, the graphs take a semi-bipartite form where input nodes map to output nodes, such that output nodes may connect to each other but input nodes may not. Intuitively, the graph's input-output edges represent information propagation of the encoder, while output-output edges represent the code's entanglement. We prove that this graph representation is in bijection with tableaus and give an efficient compilation algorithm that transforms tableaus into graphs. We show that this map is efficiently invertible, which gives a universal recipe for code construction by finding graphs with nice properties. The graph representation gives insight into both code construction and algorithms. To the former, we argue that graphs provide a flexible platform for building codes. We construct several constant-size codes and several infinite code families. We also use graphs to extend the quantum Gilbert-Varshamov bound to a three-way distance-rate-weight trade-off. To the latter, we show that key coding algorithms, distance approximation, weight reduction, and decoding, are unified as instances of a single optimization game on a graph. Moreover, key code properties such as distance, weight, and encoding circuit depth, are all controlled by the graph degree. We give efficient algorithms for producing encoding circuits whose depths scale with the degree and for implementing certain logical diagonal and Clifford gates with reduced depth. Finally, we find an efficient decoding algorithm for certain classes of graphs. These results give evidence that graphs are useful for the study of quantum computing and its implementations.
While stabilizer tableaus have proven useful as a descriptive tool for additive quantum codes, they otherwise offer little guidance for concrete constructions or algorithm analysis. We introduce a representation of stabilizer codes as graphs with certain structures, and prove via the ZX calculus that this representation is related to stabilizer tableaus by an efficiently computable bijection. This gives a new universal recipe for code construction by way of finding graphs with nice properties. The graph representation gives insight into both code construction and algorithms. We construct as examples families of ⟦ n , Θ ( n log n ) , Θ ( log n ) ⟧ and ⟦ n , Ω ( n 4 / 5 ) , Θ ( n 1 / 5 ) ⟧ codes. We use graphs in a probabilistic analysis to extend the quantum Gilbert-Varshamov bound into a three-way distance-rate-weight trade-off. Moreover, code properties such as distance and encoding circuit depth are bounded by simple functions of the graph degree. We prove that key coding algorithms—distance approximation, minimum-weight generator selection, and decoding—are unified as instances of one optimization game on a graph. By studying this game, we construct an efficient greedy decoder and prove that it corrects all recoverable errors for all graphs with cycle lengths no shorter than 13 (reducible to 5 with mild extra constraints); these include the above two families. Our results suggest that graphs are generically useful for the study of stabilizer codes.
We present a quantum compilation algorithm that maps Clifford encoders, encoding maps for stabilizer quantum codes, to a unique graphical representation in the ZX calculus. Specifically, we develop a canonical form in the ZX calculus and prove canonicity as well as efficient reducibility of any Clifford encoder into the canonical form. The diagrams produced by our compiler visualize information propagation and entanglement structure of the encoder, revealing properties that may be obscured in the circuit or stabilizer-tableau representation. Consequently, our canonical representation may be an informative technique for the design of new stabilizer quantum codes via graph theory analysis.
We describe a general method for turning quantum circuits into sparse quantum subsystem codes. The idea is to turn each circuit element into a set of low-weight gauge generators that enforce the input-output relations of that circuit element. Using this prescription, we can map an arbitrary stabilizer code into a new subsystem code with the same distance and number of encoded qubits but where all the generators have constant weight, at the cost of adding some ancilla qubits. With an additional overhead of ancilla qubits, the new code can also be made spatially local. Applying our construction to certain concatenated stabilizer codes yields families of subsystem codes with constant weight generators and with minimum distance d = n1-∈, where E = O(1/√log n). For spatially local codes in D dimensions, we nearly saturate a bound due to Bravyi and Terhal and achieve d = n1-∈-1/D. Previously the best code distance achievable with constant-weight generators in any dimension, due to Freedman, Meyer, and Luo, was O(√n log n) for a stabilizer code.
We study objects that can be represented as graphs, error-correcting codes, quantum states, or Boolean functions. It is known that self-dual additive codes, which can also be interpreted as quantum states, can be represented as graphs, and that two codes are equivalent when the corresponding graphs are equivalent with respect to local complementation (LC). We give classifications of such codes. Circulant graph codes are introduced, and it is shown that some of these codes have highly regular graph representations. We show that the orbit of a bipartite graph under edge local complementation (ELC) corresponds to the equivalence class of a binary linear code. We classify ELC orbits, give a new method for classifying binary linear codes, and show that the information sets and the minimum distance of a code can be derived from the corresponding ELC orbit. Self-dual additive codes over GF(4) can also be interpreted as quadratic Boolean functions. In this context we define PARIHN, peak-to-average power ratio with respect to the {I, H, N}n transform, and prove that PARIHN equals the size of the maximum independent set over the associated LC orbit of graphs. We define the aperiodic propagation criteria (APC) of a Boolean function, and show that it is related to the minimum distance of a self-dual additive code over GF(4), and to the degree of entanglement in the associated quantum state. We give a generalization to non-quadratic Boolean functions, and relate APC to known cryptographic criteria. Interlace polynomials encode many properties of the LC and ELC orbits of a graph. We enumerate interlace polynomials and circle graphs, show that there exist non-unimodal interlace polynomials, and relate properties of interlace polynomials to properties of codes and quantum states. We define self-dual bent functions, and provide constructions and classifications.
We propose a systematic scheme for the construction of graphs associated with binary stabilizer codes. The scheme is characterized by three main steps: first, the stabilizer code is realized as a codeword-stabilized (CWS) quantum code; second, the canonical form of the CWS code is uncovered; third, the input vertices are attached to the graphs. To check the effectiveness of the scheme, we discuss several graphical constructions of various useful stabilizer codes characterized by single and multi-qubit encoding operators. In particular, the error-correcting capabilities of such quantum codes are verified in graph-theoretic terms as originally advocated by Schlingemann and Werner. Finally, possible generalizations of our scheme for the graphical construction of both (stabilizer and nonadditive) nonbinary and continuous-variable quantum codes are briefly addressed.
We study quantum networks with tree structures, in which information propagates from a root to leaves. At each node in the network, the received qubit unitarily interacts with fresh ancilla qubits, after which each qubit is sent through a noisy channel to a different node in the next level. Therefore, as the tree depth grows, there is a competition between the irreversible effect of noise and the protection against such noise achieved by the delocalization of information. In the classical setting, where each node simply copies the input bit into multiple output bits, this model has been studied as the broadcasting or reconstruction problem on trees, which has broad applications. In this work, we study the quantum version of this problem. We consider a Clifford encoder at each node that encodes the input qubit in a stabilizer code, along with a single qubit Pauli noise channel at each edge. Such noisy quantum trees describe a scenario in which one has access to a stream of fresh (low-entropy) ancilla qubits, but cannot perform error correction. Therefore, they provide a different perspective on quantum fault tolerance. Furthermore, they provide a useful model for describing the effect of noise within the encoders of concatenated codes. We prove that above certain noise thresholds, which depend on the properties of the code such as its distance, as well as the properties of the encoder, information decays exponentially with the depth of the tree. On the other hand, by studying certain efficient decoders, we prove that for codes with distance d ≥ 2 and for sufficiently small (but non-zero) noise, classical information and entanglement propagate over a noisy tree with infinite depth. Indeed, we find that this remains true even for binary trees with certain 2-qubit encoders at each node, which encodes the received qubit in the binary repetition code with distance d = 1.