The minimum-weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoder is a standard decoding strategy for surface codes, but its performance can degrade considerably under biased noise. In this work, a modified family of surface codes, termed the XYZ planar code, is introduced, and MWPM is extended to posterior MWPM (pMWPM), which exploits the information provided by mixed stabilizers with almost no increase in decoding complexity. The XYZ--pMWPM and XZZX code--decoder combinations are compared under homogeneous independent and identically distributed (IID) Pauli noise and processor-derived independent nonidentically distributed (INID) noise. Under homogeneous biased Pauli noise, pMWPM substantially increases the threshold of the XYZ planar code relative to conventional MWPM. At finite code distances, particularly for small codes under strong bias, XYZ--pMWPM achieves logical error rates comparable to or lower than those of XZZX. Under INID noise, the pseudothreshold ordering observed under the corresponding homogeneous IID references is not always preserved; in some hardware--distance settings, XYZ--pMWPM achieves pseudothresholds comparable to or higher than those of XZZX. Within XZZX, qubit-specific weighting consistently yields higher INID pseudothresholds than average-rate weighting for the hardware instances considered. It is further found that the IID--INID pseudothreshold shift depends strongly on the physical-error scalarization and the construction of the homogeneous IID reference. These results show that pMWPM efficiently exploits the mixed-stabilizer structure of the XYZ planar code and provides competitive finite-distance decoding under biased and spatially nonuniform noise.
The minimum-weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoder is a standard decoding strategy for surface codes, but its performance can degrade considerably under biased noise. In this work, a modified family of surface codes, termed the XYZ planar code, is introduced, and MWPM is extended to posterior MWPM (pMWPM), which exploits the information provided by mixed stabilizers with almost no increase in decoding complexity. The XYZ--pMWPM and XZZX code--decoder combinations are compared under homogeneous independent and identically distributed (IID) Pauli noise and processor-derived independent nonidentically distributed (INID) noise. Under homogeneous biased Pauli noise, pMWPM substantially increases the threshold of the XYZ planar code relative to conventional MWPM. At finite code distances, particularly for small codes under strong bias, XYZ--pMWPM achieves logical error rates comparable to or lower than those of XZZX. Under INID noise, the pseudothreshold ordering observed under the corresponding homogeneous IID references is not always preserved; in some hardware--distance settings, XYZ--pMWPM achieves pseudothresholds comparable to or higher than those of XZZX. Within XZZX, qubit-specific weighting consistently yields higher INID pseudothresholds than average-rate weighting for the hardware instances considered. It is further found that the IID--INID pseudothreshold shift depends strongly on the physical-error scalarization and the construction of the homogeneous IID reference. These results show that pMWPM efficiently exploits the mixed-stabilizer structure of the XYZ planar code and provides competitive finite-distance decoding under biased and spatially nonuniform noise.
The minimum weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoder is the standard decoding strategy for quantum surface codes. However, it suffers a harsh decrease in performance when subjected to biased or nonidentical quantum noise. In this work, we modify the conventional MWPM decoder so that it considers the biases, the nonuniformities, and the relationship between X, Y, and Z errors of the constituent qubits of a given surface code. Our modified approach, which we refer to as the recursive MWPM decoder, obtains an 18 improvement in the probability threshold pth under depolarizing noise. We also obtain significant performance improvements when considering biased noise and independent nonidentically distributed (i.ni.d.) error models derived from measurements performed on state-of-the-art quantum processors. In fact, when subjected to i.ni.d. noise, the recursive MWPM decoder yields a performance improvement of 105.5 over the conventional MWPM strategy, and in some cases, it even surpasses the performance obtained over the well-known depolarizing channel.
Surface codes are generally studied based on the assumption that each of the qubits that make up the surface code lattice suffers noise that is independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). However, real benchmarks of the individual relaxation (T1) and dephasing (T2) times of the constituent qubits of state-of-the-art quantum processors have recently shown that the decoherence effects suffered by each particular qubit actually vary in intensity. In consequence, in this paper we introduce the independent nonidentically distributed (i.n.i.d.) noise model, a decoherence model that accounts for the nonuniform behavior of the decoherence parameters of qubits. Additionally, we use the i.n.i.d. model to study how it affects the performance of a specific family of quantum error correction codes known as planar codes. For this purpose we employ data from four state-of-the-art superconducting processors: ibmq_brooklyn, ibm_washington, Zuchongzhi, and Rigetti Aspen-M-1. Our results show that the i.i.d. noise assumption overestimates the performance of surface codes, which can suffer up to 95 performance decrements in terms of the code pseudothreshold when they are subjected to the i.n.i.d. noise model. Furthermore, we consider and describe two methods which enhance the performance of planar codes under i.n.i.d. noise. The first method involves a so-called reweighting process of the conventional minimum weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoder, while the second one exploits the relationship that exists between code performance and qubit arrangement in the surface code lattice. The optimum qubit configuration derived through the combination of the previous two methods can yield planar code pseudothreshold values that are up to 650 higher than for the traditional MWPM decoder under i.n.i.d. noise.
In some quantum computing architectures, Pauli noise is highly biased. Tailoring Quantum error-correcting codes to the biased noise may benefit reducing the physical qubit overhead without reducing the logical error rate. In this paper, we propose a family of quantum XYZ cyclic codes, which are the only one family of quantum cyclic codes with code distance increasing with code length to our best knowledge and have good error-correcting performance against biased noise. Our simulation results show that the quantum XYZ cyclic codes have 50% code-capacity thresholds for all three types of pure Pauli noise and around 13% code-capacity threshold for depolarizing noise. In the finite-bias regime, when the noise is biased towards Pauli Z errors with noise bias ratios ηZ=1000, the corresponding code-capacity threshold is around 49%. Besides, we show that to reach the same code distance, the physical qubit overhead of XYZ cyclic code is much less than that of the XZZX surface code.
We consider a topological stabilizer code on a honeycomb grid, the "XYZ 2 " code. The code is inspired by the Kitaev honeycomb model and is a simple realization of a "matching code" discussed by Wootton [J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 48, 215302 (2015)], with a specific implementation of the boundary. It utilizes weight-six ( XYZXYZ ) plaquette stabilizers and weight-two ( XX ) link stabilizers on a planar hexagonal grid composed of 2d2 qubits for code distance d , with weight-three stabilizers at the boundary, stabilizing one logical qubit. We study the properties of the code using maximum-likelihood decoding, assuming perfect stabilizer measurements. For pure X , Y , or Z noise, we can solve for the logical failure rate analytically, giving a threshold of 50%. In contrast to the rotated surface code and the XZZX code, which have code distance d2 only for pure Y noise, here the code distance is 2d2 for both pure Z and pure Y noise. Thresholds for noise with finite Z bias are similar to the XZZX code, but with markedly lower sub-threshold logical failure rates. The code possesses distinctive syndrome properties with unidirectional pairs of plaquette defects along the three directions of the triangular lattice for isolated errors, which may be useful for efficient matching-based or other approximate decoding.
While independent and identically distributed noise is typically assumed in quantum computing research, complex error models such as correlated and spatio-temporal errors remain underexplored. In this paper, the performance of XZZX and rotated surface codes is evaluated under these complex noise models. Standard graph-based decoders struggle with the hyperedges generated by correlated errors on bias-tailored codes. To address this, we employ the Minimum Weight Parity Factor (MWPF) decoder, which natively processes syndrome hypergraphs without artificial edge decomposition. Our simulations show that under strong Z-biased circuit-level correlated noise (η=100), the threshold of the rotated code degrades to ≈0.36%, while the XZZX code drops to ≈0.70%. Furthermore, a distinct non-monotonic threshold dependence is observed for the XZZX code across different bias ratios. While the XZZX code effectively absorbs high-density Z-type hyperedges at extreme biases, it exhibits a threshold minimum at moderate biases (η≈10) because transverse X and Y errors actively bridge the diagonal strings, breaking the code's one-dimensional decoupling symmetry. These findings demonstrate that utilizing hypergraph-aware decoders is critical, as the performance of bias-tailored codes is highly sensitive to the geometric structure of spatio-temporal correlated noise.
Efficient and realistic error decoding is crucial for fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC) on near-term devices. While decoding is a classical post-processing task, its effectiveness depends on accurately modeling quantum noise, which is hardware-dependent. In particular, correlated bit-flip (X) and phase-flip (Z) errors often arise under circuit-level noise. We introduce the Iterative Reweighting Minimum-Weight Perfect Matching (IRMWPM) decoder, which systematically incorporates such correlations to enhance quantum error correction. Our method leverages fault-detection patterns to guide reweighting: correlated X and Z detection events are identified, and their conditional probabilities update weights on the primal and dual lattices. This iterative procedure improves handling of realistic error propagation in a hardware-agnostic yet noise-aware manner. We prove that IRMWPM converges in finite time while preserving the distance guarantee of MWPM. Numerical results under circuit-level noise show substantial improvements. For distances ≥17 and physical error rates ≤0.001, IRMWPM reduces logical error rates by over 20x with only a few iterations. It also raises the accuracy threshold from 1% to 1.16%, making it practical for near-term real-time decoding. Extrapolated estimates suggest that to reach logical error rate 10−16, IRMWPM requires distance d=31, while standard MWPM needs d=50, implying a major reduction in qubit overhead.