In this paper, we propose a multistage decoding framework that leverages internal information produced by an underlying message-passing decoder. The proposed method targets the failure dynamics caused by both classical trapping sets and degenerate errors supported on symmetric stabilizers, which are among the primary limitations of iterative decoding for QLDPC codes. To identify unreliable variable nodes, we introduce a heuristic metric that combines several dynamical features of the decoder, including variable-node log likelihood reliabilities, hard-decision oscillations, the number of adjacent unsatisfied checks, and the soft information contributed by unsatisfied checks. Based on this ranking metric, the decoder performs guided rewinds by selectively forcing the initial log likelihood ratio values of the most suspicious variable nodes and restarting the message-passing decoder under the corresponding forced configuration. To manage the combinatorial growth of candidate configurations, the search is formulated within a beam- search framework with controlled beam width. In addition, we introduce a pruning metric based on the combination of the residual syndrome weight and a posteriori reliability of the decoder output, thereby retaining only the most promising search paths. Logical error rate results demonstrate that the proposed decoder significantly outperforms the normalized min- sum decoder and achieves competitive performance with belief propagation enhanced by order-10 ordered statistics decoding.
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Accepted for presentation at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE 2026)
In this paper, we propose a multistage decoding framework that leverages internal information produced by an underlying message-passing decoder. The proposed method targets the failure dynamics caused by both classical trapping sets and degenerate errors supported on symmetric stabilizers, which are among the primary limitations of iterative decoding for QLDPC codes. To identify unreliable variable nodes, we introduce a heuristic metric that combines several dynamical features of the decoder, including variable-node log likelihood reliabilities, hard-decision oscillations, the number of adjacent unsatisfied checks, and the soft information contributed by unsatisfied checks. Based on this ranking metric, the decoder performs guided rewinds by selectively forcing the initial log likelihood ratio values of the most suspicious variable nodes and restarting the message-passing decoder under the corresponding forced configuration. To manage the combinatorial growth of candidate configurations, the search is formulated within a beam- search framework with controlled beam width. In addition, we introduce a pruning metric based on the combination of the residual syndrome weight and a posteriori reliability of the decoder output, thereby retaining only the most promising search paths. Logical error rate results demonstrate that the proposed decoder significantly outperforms the normalized min- sum decoder and achieves competitive performance with belief propagation enhanced by order-10 ordered statistics decoding.
Practical quantum computations can require logical error rates of 10−12 or lower. Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes are promising candidates for reaching such rates with low qubit overhead, provided that their syndromes can be decoded efficiently. Repeated noisy syndrome measurements introduce temporal degeneracy into the space-time decoding graph. We characterize the temporal kernel, whose vectors have zero total data parity, and show that it is generated by elementary temporal codewords of weight dv+2, where dv is the variable-node degree. For (dv,dc)-regular parity-check matrices with fixed degrees dv,dc>2 and girth greater than four, we derive counting bounds and construct degenerate error patterns of weight (dv+2)/2 for even dv and dv+1 for odd dv, with multiplicity Θ(nr) in the blocklength n and number of measurement rounds r. Under the isolation assumption, these patterns cause local failures of deterministic isotropic message-passing decoders under a flooding schedule. These failures depend on the node degrees rather than the minimum distance; for the bivariate bicycle (BB) codes considered, their weight is equal to four. Monte carlo simulations and fixed-weight importance sampling quantify harmful low-weight degenerate error patterns for the min-sum (MS) decoder beyond the isolation assumption. Motivated by the identified symmetries, we propose space-time anisotropic min-sum decoding with syndrome-guided realizations. Its complexity is linear in the number of Tanner graph edges for fixed maximum number of iterations and number of decoders. Numerical results on BB codes show threshold-like behavior acrossthe tested code sizes and improved failure probabilities relative to MS decoding with ordered statistics decoding post-processing.
Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes are strong candidates for fault-tolerant quantum computation, but efficient decoding remains a major challenge due to short cycles, degeneracy, and the poor convergence of standard belief-propagation (BP) decoders. We propose a reinforcement learning-based list sequential (RL-LS) BP decoder for QLDPC codes by extending the reinforcement-learning-based sequential variable-node scheduling (RL-S) framework with list-based search. At each step, the learned policy selects the next variable node to update; the decoder then retains the ordinary RL-S trajectory while also exploring a competing branch obtained by softly biasing the post-update LLR pair toward the second-most likely Pauli symbol, recomputing the incident local BP messages, and setting the visited variable node to that second-best symbol. Candidate trajectories are ranked and pruned using our proposed cumulative path metric. The resulting decoder extends the learned decoder by combining the improved convergence of learned sequential scheduling with list exploration. Numerical results on representative QLDPC benchmark codes over the depolarizing channel show that our proposed method improves the decoding performance of the underlying decoder and compares favorably with existing BP-based decoding methods.
Accurate decoding of quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes often relies on expensive post-processing search, although decoding difficulty varies strongly between syndromes. We find that the benefit of deeper post-processing search is highly concentrated in a small subset of decoding instances, and that these instances can be identified directly from the decoder itself. To this end, we introduce an adaptive decoder based on belief propagation (BP) and ordered-statistics decoding (OSD), using the disagreement between the BP hard decision and the syndrome-consistent order-zero OSD solution as an internal risk signal to determine where deeper search is required. On a [[144,12,12]] bivariate bicycle code under circuit-level depolarising noise, encoding 12 logical qubits in 144 data qubits with distance 12, escalating only the highest-risk 20% of instances recovers 85% to 92% of the improvement in logical error rate available from a full one-free-variable sweep, while reducing the mean serial decoding cost by a factor of 3.6 relative to applying the same truncated search to every instance. At matched budget, disagreement-guided routing also outperforms routing based on the BP syndrome residual, syndrome weight and random selection. The same behaviour reappears on a structurally distinct radial qLDPC code obtained from a lifted-product construction, where escalating 20% of instances recovers 87% to 94% of the available gain. A Z-memory experiment on the Quantinuum H2 trapped-ion processor, implementing both X-type and Z-type checks, further shows that the signal remains predictive under device noise. These results show that decoder-internal disagreement can expose where additional decoding effort is valuable, allowing classical computation to be concentrated on the instances most likely to benefit from it.
We introduce a parallel decoder for quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes based on probabilistic bits (p-bits), tunable stochastic binary units controlled by local fields. The idea is that predicted error configurations, interpreted as explanations of the observed syndrome, are updated stochastically using local Gibbs conditionals, while a progressively strengthened parity penalty drives the search toward syndrome-valid configurations. A coloring of the decoding graph enables parallel block updates, and independent replicas and restarts provide trajectory diversity. The best candidate encountered during the search is returned, mirroring the candidate-selection strategy of recent ensemble decoders. At the stated update budgets, the resulting logical error rates are on par with leading decoders under both code-capacity and circuit-level noise. While the total number of variable resamplings can be substantially larger than the message-update count of BP-based alternatives, the numerical results establish constraint-annealed p-bit dynamics as a competitive stochastic alternative for QLDPC decoding and motivate further study of hardware-native implementations.
Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes are promising candidates for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation, but their practical use requires fast, low-complexity, and reliable decoders. Belief propagation (BP) is attractive because of its local message-passing structure, yet standard flooding BP often suffers from convergence failures on QLDPC codes due to short cycles, degeneracy, and symmetric decoding trajectories. Learned sequential BP improves convergence by using a reinforcement-learning policy to choose variable-node update orders, but a single learned trajectory can still be sensitive to unfavorable local Pauli decisions. We propose a learned parallel bit-flipping sequential BP decoder with a new quaternary score combining syndrome gain, a quantized Pauli log-likelihood penalty, and Q-table lookahead at hypothetical post-flip states. Our decoder first runs learned sequential BP for a fixed number of iterations. If the syndrome is not satisfied, it constructs quaternary bit-flipping candidates, each corresponding to changing the current Pauli decision of one qubit. The selected candidates initialize independent learned sequential BP continuations from the same decoder state. Since these continuations are independent, they can be executed in parallel, so testing several candidates mainly increases parallel hardware resources rather than sequential decoding latency. Simulations on representative QLDPC codes over the depolarizing channel show that the proposed decoder improves the reliability of learned sequential BP while having a parallel low-latency structure.
We design low-complexity, fault-tolerant decoders for quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes with the goal of reducing decoding latency. We target two major bottlenecks of decoding under the \emph{circuit-level} noise model: (i) post-processing via order-statistics decoding (OSD), and (ii) the large number of auxiliary variable nodes commonly introduced to represent CNOT-induced correlations during syndrome extraction. Our key observation is that propagating CNOT faults (\emph{hook errors}) create \emph{stabilizer-induced} trapping sets (TSs) that are intrinsic to hypergraph-product (HGP) and lifted-product (LP) constructions. Therefore, instead of modeling each such fault with an explicit correlation node and relying on OSD to clean up the resulting failures, we design message-passing decoders that resolve the corresponding \emph{stabilizer-induced} TSs directly. We obtain these decoders by deriving QLDPC decoders from decoders for the parent classical LDPC codes and using them collectively to correct broad families of \emph{stabilizer-induced} TSs. For CNOT faults that manifest primarily as syndrome errors, we show that their effect is equivalent to a data error together with syndrome-bit measurement errors. Consequently, given repeated measurements and a decoding graph that already includes nodes representing syndrome-bit errors, no distinct variable node is needed for each CNOT fault. Using a \emph{phenomenological} Tanner graph with nodes representing only data errors and syndrome-bit errors, simulations on LP codes show a significant improvement in logical error rate relative to BP+OSD. Moreover, the improved error correction relies on low-complexity finite-state iterative decoders, targeted for fast and low-latency FPGA implementation.