The protection of quantum information in systems leveraging more than two basis states (qudits) is an ongoing challenge. A tool for transforming the plethora of qubit stabilizer codes into qudit stabilizer codes is the local-dimension-invariant (LDI) extension to the stabilizer formalism. A drawback of the LDI method is that generally in order to ensure the distance of the resultant code is at least preserved the newly selected local-dimension will need to be any prime bigger than a large cutoff value. In this work we consider the repercussions of this large cutoff value, then by focusing on quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes we are able to bring down this cutoff value. Notably, we are able to reduce it in some cases to the initial local-dimension and for arbitrary CSS qubit-derived codes to singly exponential in $d$ with no dependence on the number of logicals $k$. This reduces the size of the caveat in LDI forms in their distance preservation condition.
The protection of quantum information in systems leveraging more than two basis states (qudits) is an ongoing challenge. A tool for transforming the plethora of qubit stabilizer codes into qudit stabilizer codes is the local-dimension-invariant (LDI) extension to the stabilizer formalism. A drawback of the LDI method is that generally in order to ensure the distance of the resultant code is at least preserved the newly selected local-dimension will need to be any prime bigger than a large cutoff value. In this work we consider the repercussions of this large cutoff value, then by focusing on quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes we are able to bring down this cutoff value. Notably, we are able to reduce it in some cases to the initial local-dimension and for arbitrary CSS qubit-derived codes to singly exponential in d with no dependence on the number of logicals k. This reduces the size of the caveat in LDI forms in their distance preservation condition.
Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes can be implemented by measuring only low-weight checks, making them compatible with noisy quantum hardware and central to the quest to build noise-resilient quantum computers. A fundamental open question is how constraints on check weight limit the achievable parameters of qLDPC codes. Here, we study stabilizer and subsystem codes with constrained check weight, combining analytical arguments with numerical optimization to establish strong upper bounds on their parameters. We show that stabilizer codes with checks of weight at most three cannot have nontrivial distance. We also prove tight tradeoffs between rate and distance for broad families of CSS stabilizer and subsystem codes with checks of weight at most four and two, respectively. Notably, our bounds are applicable to general qLDPC codes, as they rely only on check-weight constraints without assuming geometric locality or special graph connectivity. In the finite-size regime, we derive numerical upper bounds using linear programming techniques and identify explicit code constructions that approach these limits, delineating the landscape of practically relevant qLDPC codes with tens or hundreds of physical qubits.
Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes have a canonical mixed state---the normalized projector onto the code space---that lies at the intersection of quantum error correction and quantum many-body physics, yet the stability of its information-theoretic structure under local noise remains poorly understood. Recent progress on mixed-state phases of matter has identified the spatial decay of conditional mutual information (CMI) I(A:C∣B) as a key diagnostic of such stability, analogous to the role of the spectral gap for quantum ground states. We prove that, for the normalized code-projector state of a Zd qLDPC stabilizer code under local Pauli noise, the CMI across a buffer B separating A from C decays exponentially with the width of B in two complementary noise regimes independent of system size. At weak noise, this holds for full-system tripartitions, where correlations between the two sides require an error cluster to cross the buffer, an exponentially unlikely event. At strong noise, exponential decay holds whenever the buffer supports no logical operator, since correlations can persist only along rare chains of buffer qudits that remain informative. Under an additional space-uniformity assumption, we establish the robustness of Levin--Wen topological entropy. On finite-dimensional lattices of size n, the weak-noise bound further implies a constant-layer quasi-local Petz recovery channel of range $O(\poly(\log n)/\varepsilon)$ that recovers the noiseless state within trace-distance error ε. Both CMI bounds apply to general qLDPC interaction graphs, including geometries where such constant-depth quasi-local recovery need not exist. Thus, the exponential decay of the noise-induced CMI provides a general criterion for mixed-state phase stability.
Protecting information in systems that have more than two basis states (qudits) not only offers a promising route for reducing the number of individual quantum locations that must be protected, while more accurately reflecting the structure of realistic quantum hardware, but also has some possibly enticing foundational strengths. While work in the past has largely focused on protecting information in quantum devices with locations that are some consistent local structure, this work considers coding-theoretic constraints on devices constructed from locations which may vary in their local structures -- these are mixed-register quantum devices. In this work we provide some general results for mixed-register Pauli operators, then identify some stabilizer encoded information forms that are forbidden. Building on these insights, we construct coding-theoretically optimal mixed-register stabilizer codes from sets of codes defined on coprime local-dimensions. The construction of such codes results in codes with logical subspaces that do not directly correspond to any of the constituent local-dimensions.
Stabilizer codes are often constructed within the Calderbank--Shor--Steane (CSS) framework, where two mutually orthogonal binary classical codes define X and Z-type stabilizer generators. While this structure is algebraically convenient, additional non-CSS constraints may help suppress low-weight logical operators and improve decoding performance in the finite-length regime. We thus introduce quantum XYZ stabilizer codes, whose parity-check matrix (PCM) is built from three pairwise orthogonal binary PCMs associated with X-, Y-, and Z-type stabilizer generators. A nontrivial point is that an XYZ code instance is not automatically genuinely non-CSS: the same stabilizer group may admit a CSS generating set. We characterize this collapse, obtaining algebraic and rank conditions for deciding when the Y-type checks are redundant and when they define genuinely non-CSS stabilizer constraints. We also derive upper and lower bounds on the quantum minimum distance, including bounds for mixed Pauli logical operators. The novel framework includes a known non-CSS topological code, namely the XYZ2 hexagonal code, and yields also sparse finite-length quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) constructions from intersecting-subset and quasi-dyadic code families. Simulations under depolarizing code-capacity noise and quaternary belief propagation decoding show that the proposed XYZ qLDPC instances can outperform representative CSS qLDPC instances with similar finite-length parameters.
Low check weight is a crucial code property for fault-tolerant quantum computing, which underlies the strong interest in quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes. Here, we initiate the theory of weight-constrained stabilizer codes from various foundational perspectives including the complexity of computing code weight and the explicit boundary of feasible low-weight codes in both theoretical and practical settings. We first prove that computing the optimal generator weight of a stabilizer code is NP-hard, motivating efficiently computable bounds. We derive analytical lower bounds on check weight in terms of code rate and distance, identifying the minimum weights needed for single-qubit error detection and correction, as well as the sharp distance and rate limits of weight-three error-detecting codes. Matching constructions show that these bounds are tight in several regimes. To establish refined finite-size constraints, we develop a linear programming framework based on quantum weight enumerators subject to generator-weight constraints, yielding exact optimal weights for all parameter combinations with n≤9. Finally, we show that the same framework can incorporate architecture-dependent constraints, using the 127-qubit IBM Eagle chip as a concrete example. Our study brings the weight as a crucial parameter into coding theory and provides guidance for code design and utility in practical scenarios.
An [[n,k,d]] stabilizer code is phantom if every in-block logical CNOT gate can be realized by a permutation of its physical qubits. This eliminates the large and complicated physical overhead normally required for logical entangling gates. Yet this symmetry is highly restrictive: phantom codes are rare, the number of logical qubits is limited to k=O(logn), and no phantom qLDPC family with growing logical dimension was previously known.
We make three contributions.
1. We prove that recognizing phantomness of a given stabilizer code is at least as hard as Graph Isomorphism, even for CSS codes encoding only k=2 logical qubits.
2. We propose the first rate optimal phantom qLDPC families: for every fixed D, our CSS families achieve the maximal logical scaling k=Θ(logn) and distance d≥D.
3. We prove a distance no-go theorem: every phantom code family with k=ω(logn) and check weight w=O(1) satisfies d≤w for sufficiently large n.
Thus our fixed-distance qLDPC families are distance-scaling optimal at the maximal logical scaling k=Θ(logn).