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arXiv:2512.15887

Deflating quantum error-correcting codes

Jaron Skovsted Gundersen, Rene Bødker Christensen, Petar Popovski, Rafał Wisniewski

quant-phcs.ITSubmitted Dec 17, 2025• Announced Dec 19, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

In this work, we introduce a technique for reducing the length of a quantum stabilizer code, and we call this deflation of the code. Deflation can be seen as a generalization of the well-known puncturing and shortening techniques in cases where more than a single qudit is removed. We show that the parameters of the deflated quantum code can be controlled, and argue that a similar approach is not as beneficial when applied to classical linear codes. Furthermore, it is shown that deflation introduces additional freedom compared to applying just puncturing and shortening consecutively. We exemplify that it is possible to obtain better parameters by deflating a code rather than consecutively using puncturing and shortening.

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Submitted to IEEE transactions on information theory November 21, 2025

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In this work, we introduce a technique for reducing the length of a quantum stabilizer code, and we call this deflation of the code. Deflation can be seen as a generalization of the well-known puncturing and shortening techniques in cases where more than a single qudit is removed. We show that the parameters of the deflated quantum code can be controlled, and argue that a similar approach is not as beneficial when applied to classical linear codes. Furthermore, it is shown that deflation introduces additional freedom compared to applying just puncturing and shortening consecutively. We exemplify that it is possible to obtain better parameters by deflating a code rather than consecutively using puncturing and shortening.
Classical coding theory contains several techniques to obtain new codes from other codes, including puncturing and shortening. Both of these techniques have been generalized to quantum codes. Restricting to stabilizer codes, this paper introduces more freedom in the choice of the encoded states after puncturing. Furthermore, we also give an explicit description of the stabilizers for the punctured code. The additional freedom in the procedure also opens up for new ways to construct new codes from old, and we present several ways to utilize this in the search for codes with good or even optimal parameters. In particular, we use the construction to obtain codes whose parameters exceed the best previously known and which are better than what general puncturing guarantees. Lastly, the freedom in our puncture procedure allowed us to generalize the proof of the Griesmer bound from the classical setting to stabilizer codes for qudits of prime dimension since the proof relies heavily on the puncturing technique.
We show that within any quantum stabilizer code there lurks a classical binary linear code with similar error-correcting capabilities. Using this result---which applies to degenerate as well as nondegenerate codes---previously established necessary conditions for classical linear codes can be easily translated into necessary conditions for quantum stabilizer codes. Examples of specific consequences are as follows: for a quantum channel subject to a \ensuremath{\delta} fraction of errors, the best asymptotic capacity attainable by any stabilizer code cannot exceed H(+$\sqrt{2\ensuremath{\delta}(1\ensuremath{-}2\ensuremath{\delta})}$); and, for the depolarizing channel with fidelity parameter \ensuremath{\delta}, the best asymptotic capacity attainable by any stabilizer code cannot exceed 1-H(\ensuremath{\delta}).
Quantum error-correcting codes are essential for reliable quantum communication. The achievable parameters can be improved by using entanglement-assisted stabilizers at the cost of consuming pre-shared Bell pairs. If the availability of such Bell pairs is intermittent, the ability to adapt the code to available resources is beneficial. That is, to pick a single mother code that can be adapted to different entanglement budgets. To achieve this, we extend an existing puncturing construction for standard/unassisted stabilizers to the entanglement-assisted setting through a three-step procedure: Interpreting the code as an unassisted stabilizer, puncturing a receiver-side qubit, and recovering an entanglement-assisted representation. This procedure reduces the number of required Bell pairs by one while preserving the number of transmitted and logical qubits. We derive a bound on the resulting distance loss and establish conditions for preserving the original code distance. Finally, we analyse distinct, randomly generated, entanglement-assisted stabilizers with five to eight transmitted qubits. Of these codes, 14.75% have a greater distance than their associated unassisted representations. Among this subset, 81.4% admit at least one puncturing choice that preserves the original entanglement-assisted distance. These results illustrate how puncturing can reduce entanglement requirements while maintaining code distance.
Quantum decoherence and errors represent some of the major challenges arising in quantum computations. Quantum error correcting codes protect quantum states against these errors and make quantum computing more reliable. One of the main problems of quantum error correction is the design of feasible decoding algorithms that can simplify error-correction for general quantum codes. The dissertation addresses decoding of general Codeword Stabilized (CWS) codes. This class of quantum codes also includes some other important classes such as additive Stabilizer codes and non-additive Union Stabilizer (USt) codes.We first design a generic error-correcting algorithm for CWS codes and analyze the number of decoding measurements and quantum gates. This algorithm performs exhaustive screening of different error patterns, similar to decoding of classical non-linear codes. For an n-qubit quantum code correcting up to t erroneous qubits, this brute-force approach consecutively tests all correctable error patterns and employs a separate n-qubit measurement in each test.The main result is a new error grouping technique that enables simultaneous testing of large groups of errors in a single measurement. To achieve this reduction, we first proceed with a new error-correction algorithm for the USt codes. Secondly, we design an algorithm that converts generic non-linear CWS codes into the simpler quasi-linear USt codes. Each decoding measurement can then either locate the actual error in a given group of errors or entirely eliminate this group. This technique yields a much simpler algorithm that exponentially reduces the number of measurements about 3^t times in any t-error-correcting CWS code.
Recently, the field of quantum error-correcting codes has rapidly emerged as an important discipline. As quantum information is extremely sensitive to noise, it seems unlikely that any large scale quantum computation is feasible without quantum error-correction. In this paper we give a brief exposition of the theory of quantum stabilizer codes. We review the stabilizer formalism of quantum codes, establish the connection between classical codes and stabilizer codes and the main methods for constructing quantum codes from classical codes. In addition to the expository part, we include new results that cannot be found elsewhere. Specifically, after reviewing some important bounds for quantum codes, we prove the nonexistence of pure perfect quantum stabilizer codes with minimum distance greater than 3. Finally, we illustrate the general methods of constructing quantum codes from classical codes by explicitly constructing two new families of quantum codes and conclude by showing how to construct new quantum codes by shortening.