There have been significant recent advances in constructing theoretical and practical quantum error correcting codes that function well as quantum memories; however, performing fault-tolerant logical gates on these codes is less studied, and the protocols that do exist often require significant complexity. Building off the symplectic double construction, we investigate concatenated symplectic double codes, which have a rich set of logical gates implementable using only physical single-qubit gates and qubit relabeling. Combined with injected fold-transversal gates, the full Clifford group on a single codeblock is achieved through a functionally simple circuit. We perform circuit-level simulations of state preparation and quantum error correction on these codes and show that they have promising performance at near state-of-the-art physical error rates. As such, we argue that concatenated symplectic double codes are strong contenders as the underlying computational code on medium- to large-scale quantum computers.
There have been significant recent advances in constructing theoretical and practical quantum error correcting codes that function well as quantum memories; however, performing fault-tolerant logical gates on these codes is less studied, and the protocols that do exist often require significant complexity. Building off the symplectic double construction, we investigate concatenated symplectic double codes, which have a rich set of logical gates implementable using only physical single-qubit gates and qubit relabeling. Combined with injected fold-transversal gates, the full Clifford group on a single codeblock is achieved through a functionally simple circuit. We perform circuit-level simulations of state preparation and quantum error correction on these codes and show that they have promising performance at near state-of-the-art physical error rates. As such, we argue that concatenated symplectic double codes are strong contenders as the underlying computational code on medium- to large-scale quantum computers.
Low-space-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation requires not only high-rate quantum error-correcting codes but also space-efficient implementations of logical operations. Transversal and fold-transversal gates are promising since they limit error propagation and require no additional qubits. However, the logical operations they enable are typically restricted, and a central challenge is to construct codes that combine a complete set of logical Clifford gates with favorable code parameters. In this work, we introduce a family of quantum codes with an asymptotically constant encoding rate and sublogarithmically growing stabilizer weight, while supporting the entire logical Clifford group using only transversal and fold-transversal gates. Our construction is based on classical codes whose code spaces are absolutely irreducible Steinberg modules of their Tanner-graph automorphism groups. Taking hypergraph products of these classical codes yields quantum codes for which all logical Clifford operations can be synthesized from a fixed set of transversal and fold-transversal gates. Moreover, the slow growth of the stabilizer weight enables a high error-correcting performance in small instances. These results provide a path toward fault-tolerant quantum computation with low space overhead using transversal and fold-transversal gates.
Quantum error correction is the backbone of fault-tolerant quantum computation, a necessary requirement for any large scale quantum computer. The fault-tolerance threshold theorem has long been a target for experimental precision, allowing for the possibility of reducing logical error rates to arbitrarily low levels without excessive overhead. While there are many promising fault-tolerant architectures, the path towards the most practical fault-tolerant scheme is far from decided and may vary for differing physical models. This thesis proposes new schemes for universal fault-tolerant quantum computation in both the concatenated and topological code settings. \n \nThrough the concatenation of two different error correcting codes, a set of universal fault-tolerant gates can be obtained without requiring the need for magic state distillation. A lower bound of 1.28times10−3 for the fault-tolerance threshold under circuit level depolarizing noise is obtained. Additionally, stacked codes are proposed as a means to simulate the action of a 3D topological code in 2D, allowing for the application of a universal set of transversal operations. While fault-tolerant, unfortunately the scheme does not exhibit a threshold due to the decreasing pseudo-threshold with growing code distance, yet points to potential interesting avenues for fault-tolerant computation in 2D without distillation. \n \nOne of the primary avenues to constructing fault-tolerant logical operations is through transversal operations. In this thesis, the set of single qubit logical gates that can be implemented transversally are characterized and determined to all belong to the Clifford hierarchy. Moreover, any diagonal two-qubit operation that can be applied transversally must belong to the same level of the Clifford hierarchy as the set of gates that can be implemented in the single-qubit case. \n \nThe opposite to quantum error correction is privacy, where the output of a channel is disguised from its input. The two are fundamentally related through the complementary channel construction. This thesis presents a new class of private quantum channels, expanding the existing class beyond a seemingly fundamental restriction. This yields interesting insights into the structure of quantum information and the leaking of information to external environments. Additionally, the duality is only recovered when extending the complementary channel to sufficiently high environmental dimension. \n \nFinally, the error properties of bucket brigade quantum Random Access Memory (qRAM) are assessed. It is determined that using the bucket brigade qRAM architecture for the running of Grover's algorithm necessitates reducing the error rate of the individual components to exponentially small levels for an exponential sized memory. As such, fault-tolerant architectures will likely play an essential role in the construction of such computing primitives.
To build large-scale quantum computers while minimizing resource requirements, one may want to use high-rate quantum error-correcting codes that can efficiently encode information. However, realizing an addressable gate$\unicode{x2014}$a logical gate on a subset of logical qubits within a high-rate code$\unicode{x2014}$in a fault-tolerant manner can be challenging and may require ancilla qubits. Transversal and fold-transversal gates could provide a means to fault-tolerantly implement logical gates using a constant-depth circuit without ancilla qubits, but available gates of these types could be limited depending on the code and might not be addressable. In this work, we study a family of [[n=2m,k=(m/2m)≈n/πlog2(n)/2,d=2m/2=n]] self-dual quantum Reed$\unicode{x2013}$Muller codes, where m is a positive even number. For any code in this family, we construct a generating set of the full logical Clifford group comprising only transversal and fold-transversal gates, thus enabling the implementation of any addressable Clifford gate. To our knowledge, this is the first known construction of the full logical Clifford group using only transversal and fold-transversal gates without requiring ancilla qubits for a family of codes in which k grows near-linearly in n.
Quantum computing relies on quantum error correction for high-fidelity logical operations, but scaling to achieve near-term quantum utility is highly resource-intensive. High-rate quantum LDPC codes can reduce error correction overhead, yet realizing high-rate fault-tolerant computation with these codes remains a central challenge. Apart of the lattice surgery approach, standard schemes for realizing logical gates have so far been restricted to performing global operations on all logical qubits at the same time. Another approach relies on low-rate code switching methods. In this work, we introduce a gate-based protocol for addressable single- and multi-qubit Clifford operations on individual logical qubits encoded within one or more quantum LDPC codes. Our scheme leverages logical transversal operations via an auxiliary Bacon-Shor code to perform logical operations with constant time overhead enabled by teleportation. We demonstrate the implementation of an overcomplete logical Clifford gate set and perform numerical simulations to evaluate the error-correction performance of our protocol. Finally, we observe that our scheme can be integrated with magic state cultivation protocols to achieve universal, gate-based, and fully addressable quantum computation.
Fault-tolerant logical entangling gates are essential for scalable quantum computing, but are limited by the error rates and overheads of physical two-qubit gates and measurements. To address this limitation, we introduce phantom codes-quantum error-correcting codes that realize entangling gates between all logical qubits in a code block purely through relabelling of physical qubits during compilation, yielding perfect fidelity with no spatial or temporal overhead. We present a systematic study of such codes. First, we identify phantom codes using complementary numerical and analytical approaches. We exhaustively enumerate all 2.71×1010 inequivalent CSS codes up to n=14 and identify additional instances up to n=21 via SAT-based methods. We then construct higher-distance phantom-code families using quantum Reed-Muller codes and the binarization of qudit codes. Across all identified codes, we characterize other supported fault-tolerant logical Clifford and non-Clifford operations. Second, through end-to-end noisy simulations with state preparation, full QEC cycles, and realistic physical error rates, we demonstrate scalable advantages of phantom codes over the surface code across multiple tasks. We observe a one-to-two order-of-magnitude reduction in logical infidelity at comparable qubit overhead for GHZ-state preparation and Trotterized many-body simulation tasks, given a modest preselection acceptance rate. Our work establishes phantom codes as a viable architectural route to fault-tolerant quantum computation with scalable benefits for workloads with dense local entangling structure, and introduces general tools for systematically exploring the broader landscape of quantum error-correcting codes.
Quantum computers promise to solve computational problems that are inaccessible to classical machines. The reliable execution of large-scale quantum algorithms requires robust operations in the presence of noise. Quantum error correction addresses this challenge by encoding quantum information redundantly across several physical qubits, such that errors can be detected and corrected during a computation. However, no single error-correcting code intrinsically supports an inherently robust, fault-tolerant implementation of all gates needed for universal quantum computing. Moreover, most modern approaches to both quantum error correction and the implementation of universal logical operations on encoded qubits rely on mid-circuit measurements and feed-forward control. These types of operations are technologically demanding, often slow, and prone to high error rates, and they limit the overall success probability of quantum algorithms. In this thesis, we develop fault-tolerant protocols and circuits for quantum error correction and universal logical computation, with an emphasis on implementations compatible with current hardware systems. We first focus on fault-tolerant quantum error correction on small codes. By comparing different protocols, we identify trade-offs between compact circuit constructions and their robustness to noise. We then assess their practical performance by comparing numerical simulations of noisy circuits with experimental data. Beyond the preservation of encoded information, we study how universal logic can be implemented in a fault-tolerant manner on encoded qubits. A central approach considered in this thesis is code switching, in which logical information is transferred between two distinct error-correcting codes that support complementary sets of inherently fault-tolerant logical gates. In combination, these codes give access to a complete universal fault-tolerant logical gate set. In this thesis, we determine conditions that allow us to construct fault-tolerant protocols for code switching. We adapt these protocols to the capabilities of current hardware, thereby enabling the first experimental realization of universal fault-tolerant logic by means of code switching. However, the overall performance of these schemes is limited by slow and noisy mid-circuit measurements. To address this bottleneck, we construct a suite of measurement-free fault-tolerant universal operations that do not require any measurements during the execution of an algorithm. In this framework, error correction and logical operations are implemented coherently as part of the quantum circuit, without mid-circuit measurements or in-sequence classical control. We introduce measurement-free code-switching schemes that can be scaled to arbitrary code distances through concatenation, and which thereby provide, in principle, arbitrarily strong error suppression. We further tailor our approach to the capabilities of current trapped-ion quantum processors. New circuit constructions support the first experimental implementation of a logical quantum algorithm without mid-circuit measurements, demonstrated through Grover's search on three encoded qubits. Together, the results of this thesis expand the toolbox for early fault-tolerant quantum computation. They show how protocols for quantum error correction and universal logical gates can be designed without mid-circuit measurements with realistic hardware constraints in mind, opening new pathways towards universal quantum logic.