The recently introduced tile codes are a promising alternative to surface codes, combining two-dimensional locality with higher encoding efficiency. While surface codes are well understood in terms of their logical operators and boundary behavior, much less is known about tile codes. In this work, we establish a natural and precise description of their logical operator space. We prove that, under mild assumptions, any tile code admits a canonical symplectic basis of logical operators supported along lattice boundaries, which can be generated efficiently by a simple cellular automaton with the number of update rules only depending on the non-locality of the tile code. Further, we develop algebraic and algebro-geometric frameworks for tile codes, by resolving them by translationally invariant Pauli stabilizer models and showing that they arise as derived sections of a Koszul complex on $\mathbb{P}^1 \times \mathbb{P}^1$. Finally, we introduce the concept of derived automorphisms for quantum codes. These are automorphism-like operations that can exist even for codes that do not have symmetries. We explain how derived automorphisms can be implemented for tile codes in a low-overhead and fault-tolerant manner by extending the lattice on one side and shrinking it on the other. While this operation is trivial for the surface code, it induces a product of logical CNOT gates on the encoded information. Our results provide new structural insights into tile codes and lay the groundwork for tile codes as building blocks for fault-tolerant quantum computation.
The recently introduced tile codes are a promising alternative to surface codes, combining two-dimensional locality with higher encoding efficiency. While surface codes are well understood in terms of their logical operators and boundary behavior, much less is known about tile codes. In this work, we establish a natural and precise description of their logical operator space. We prove that, under mild assumptions, any tile code admits a canonical symplectic basis of logical operators supported along lattice boundaries, which can be generated efficiently by a simple cellular automaton with the number of update rules only depending on the non-locality of the tile code. Further, we develop algebraic and algebro-geometric frameworks for tile codes, by resolving them by translationally invariant Pauli stabilizer models and showing that they arise as derived sections of a Koszul complex on P1×P1. Finally, we introduce the concept of derived automorphisms for quantum codes. These are automorphism-like operations that can exist even for codes that do not have symmetries. We explain how derived automorphisms can be implemented for tile codes in a low-overhead and fault-tolerant manner by extending the lattice on one side and shrinking it on the other. While this operation is trivial for the surface code, it induces a product of logical CNOT gates on the encoded information. Our results provide new structural insights into tile codes and lay the groundwork for tile codes as building blocks for fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Fault-tolerant quantum computation is a technique that is necessary to build a scalable quantum computer from noisy physical building blocks. Key for the implementation of fault-tolerant computations is the ability to perform a universal set of quantum gates that act on the code space of an underlying quantum code. To implement such a universal gate set fault-tolerantly is an expensive task in terms of physical operations, and any possible shortcut to save operations is potentially beneficial and might lead to a reduction in overhead for fault-tolerant computations. We show how the automorphism group of a quantum code can be used to implement some operators on the encoded quantum states in a fault-tolerant way by merely permuting the physical qubits. We derive conditions that a code has to satisfy in order to have a large group of operations that can be implemented transversally when combining transversal CNOT with automorphisms. We give several examples for quantum codes with large groups, including codes with parameters [8, 3, 3], [15, 7, 3], [22, 8, 4], and [31, 11, 5].
We construct the first fully spatially local fault-tolerant quantum computer based on topological codes in fewer than four spatial dimensions. Our construction is a two-dimensional architecture that uses only geometrically local quantum and classical operations, bounded-speed classical communication and computation, and a constant density of quantum and classical resources. The core component is a new time-translation-invariant cellular-automaton decoder for the surface code. This decoder preserves logical information for a time stretched-exponential in the code distance and operates continuously during state injection, stabilizer-state preparation, lattice surgery, and transversal readout. We also prove that every translation-invariant topological Pauli stabilizer code is locally decodable under phenomenological noise.
We introduce tile codes, a simple yet powerful way of constructing quantum codes that are local on a planar 2D lattice. Tile codes generalize the usual surface code by allowing for a bit more flexibility in terms of locality and stabilizer weight. Our construction does not compromise on the fact that the codes are local on a lattice with open boundary conditions. Despite its simplicity, we use our construction to find codes with parameters [[288,8,12]] using weight-6 stabilizers and [[288,8,14]] using weight-8 stabilizers, outperforming all previously known constructions in this direction. Allowing for a slightly higher nonlocality, we find a [[512,18,19]] code using weight-8 stabilizers, which outperforms the rotated surface code by a factor of more than 12. Our approach provides a unified framework for understanding the structure of codes that are local on a 2D planar lattice and offers a systematic way to explore the space of possible code parameters. In particular, due to its simplicity, the construction naturally accommodates various types of boundary conditions and stabilizer configurations, making it a versatile tool for quantum error-correction code design.
Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires error-correcting codes that not only protect quantum information but also support useful logical operations with practical physical realizations. Here we develop a general framework in which the stabilizer syndromes of commuting Pauli rotations directly organize logical-gate design. We derive an exact codespace-preservation condition valid at arbitrary rotation angles, providing a common stabilizer-level description for CSS and non-CSS codes and for both Clifford and non-Clifford operations. A particularly useful equal-syndrome specialization reduces Clifford gate design to stabilizer factorization, yields a general generator weight bound of ⌈d/2⌉ for distance-d codes, and systematically extends to logical rotations higher in the Clifford hierarchy. Applied to bivariate-bicycle (BB) and non-CSS Mirror qLDPC codes, the framework gives explicit low-weight Clifford and controlled-phase gates. Our implementations yield new low-weight gates, including an addressed T gate on the [[16,4,4]] BB code, T-type rotations on the [[64,8,8]] BB code, and CCZ-, CS-, and T-type operations on the [[36,6,6]] Mirror code. We also develop analytic constructions using Clifford algebra bases, which turn the syndrome constraints into explicit algebraic relations and provide a systematic route to logical addressability. We use this approach to analytically construct addressed CNOT, SWAP, controlled, and CCZ-type gates on recursive hypercube codes. An independent construction on middle quantum Reed--Muller codes yields CrZ gates that saturate the equal-syndrome weight bound. These results establish stabilizer syndromes as a constructive link between the stabilizer structure of a quantum code, the logical computations it can directly support, and the fault-tolerance properties of their physical realizations.
A technique for realizing a universal set of fault-tolerant quantum operations is the code switching method, which leverages two quantum codes with complementary sets of transversal gates. To date, the application of this technique has been largely limited to families of color codes supporting a logical T gate. No analogous code switching protocols exist for many other prominent families, such as rotated surface codes, or for finer Z-rotation gates. In this work, we first utilize the doubling technique as a unified framework to construct a class of quantum color codes encoding a single logical qubit with an arbitrarily large minimum distance, enabling the transversal realization of arbitrary small logical Z-rotation gates. We investigate the structural properties of this code family, demonstrating that they improve upon the parameters of state-of-the-art triorthogonal codes, achieve lower qubit overhead compared to certain known color codes, and admit single-shot decoding of Z-syndromes via meta-checks. Furthermore, we show that this framework extends beyond color codes; specifically, it enables the generation of r-orthogonal quantum codes, r≥2, that inherit the local geometry of rotated surface codes. We then provide an overhead optimization protocol alongside several candidate codes tailored for realizing logical Z-rotation gates within rotated surface codes. Finally, we extend the fault-tolerant code switching protocol based on transversal CNOT gates to incorporate fault-tolerant realization of Z-rotation gates at any level of the Clifford hierarchy for geometries compatible with rotated surface codes. We present the first demonstration of fault-tolerant magic state preparation by means of code switching within a distance-three rotated surface code using a total footprint of only 45 physical qubits, and evaluate its performance through a simulation.
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.