We study fault-tolerant quantum computation using a fixed, local error-correction rule and a geometrically simple code: the cubical $(d,d')$-Toric code with $d',d-d'\geq 2$, including the 4D Toric code. Under sufficiently weak local-stochastic Pauli noise, our construction uses noiseless, bounded-depth classical processing per physical time step. Its correction cycle acts only on the current syndrome, has constant depth, and is repeated unchanged during idle logical computation; it requires neither multiscale decoder states nor scale-dependent communication delays.
Our proof treats errors and syndromes as chains in a cubical complex, combining geometric shrinking under the sweep rule with a space--time explanation-tree argument inspired by Toom's theorem. It does not rely on expansion. We establish three results:
1.Explicit higher-dimensional sweep rule. We give a local algorithm for choosing sweep corrections on cubical $(d,d')$-Toric complexes, resolving the local-existence question of Kubica and Preskill.
2. Fault-tolerant computation. We prove a circuit-level threshold theorem for noisy sweep cycles interleaved with logical gates. In particular, the 4D Toric code admits a fixed, constant-depth syndrome-based correction cycle without a multiscale decoder or expansion-based encoding. We do not claim constant total-depth overhead.
3. Ideal decoding under local-stochastic noise. For an initial local-stochastic Pauli error of rate $p$ below threshold, $n^{d+1}$ noiseless sweep cycles recover the encoded state on a side-length-$n$ $(d,d')$-Toric code with probability at least $1-O(\operatorname{poly}(n))p^{Ω(n)}$, extending earlier guarantees for independent errors.
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We study fault-tolerant quantum computation using a fixed, local error-correction rule and a geometrically simple code: the cubical (d,d′)-Toric code with d′,d−d′≥2, including the 4D Toric code. Under sufficiently weak local-stochastic Pauli noise, our construction uses noiseless, bounded-depth classical processing per physical time step. Its correction cycle acts only on the current syndrome, has constant depth, and is repeated unchanged during idle logical computation; it requires neither multiscale decoder states nor scale-dependent communication delays.
Our proof treats errors and syndromes as chains in a cubical complex, combining geometric shrinking under the sweep rule with a space--time explanation-tree argument inspired by Toom's theorem. It does not rely on expansion. We establish three results:
1.Explicit higher-dimensional sweep rule. We give a local algorithm for choosing sweep corrections on cubical (d,d′)-Toric complexes, resolving the local-existence question of Kubica and Preskill.
Fault-tolerant computation. We prove a circuit-level threshold theorem for noisy sweep cycles interleaved with logical gates. In particular, the 4D Toric code admits a fixed, constant-depth syndrome-based correction cycle without a multiscale decoder or expansion-based encoding. We do not claim constant total-depth overhead.
Ideal decoding under local-stochastic noise. For an initial local-stochastic Pauli error of rate p below threshold, nd+1 noiseless sweep cycles recover the encoded state on a side-length-n(d,d′)-Toric code with probability at least 1−O(poly(n))pΩ(n), extending earlier guarantees for independent errors.
Abstract The accumulation of physical errors 1–3 prevents the execution of large-scale algorithms in current quantum computers. Quantum error correction 4 promises a solution by encoding k logical qubits onto a larger number n of physical qubits, such that the physical errors are suppressed enough to allow running a desired computation with tolerable fidelity. Quantum error correction becomes practically realizable once the physical error rate is below a threshold value that depends on the choice of quantum code, syndrome measurement circuit and decoding algorithm 5 . We present an end-to-end quantum error correction protocol that implements fault-tolerant memory on the basis of a family of low-density parity-check codes 6 . Our approach achieves an error threshold of 0.7% for the standard circuit-based noise model, on par with the surface code 7–10 that for 20 years was the leading code in terms of error threshold. The syndrome measurement cycle for a length- n code in our family requires n ancillary qubits and a depth-8 circuit with CNOT gates, qubit initializations and measurements. The required qubit connectivity is a degree-6 graph composed of two edge-disjoint planar subgraphs. In particular, we show that 12 logical qubits can be preserved for nearly 1 million syndrome cycles using 288 physical qubits in total, assuming the physical error rate of 0.1%, whereas the surface code would require nearly 3,000 physical qubits to achieve said performance. Our findings bring demonstrations of a low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum memory within the reach of near-term quantum processors.
We prove a fault-tolerance theorem for quantum computation against adversarial noise. For every quantum circuit on Nˉ logical qudits of depth Tˉ, we construct a fault-tolerant circuit on N=poly(Nˉ) physical qudits of depth Tˉ⋅Nˉo(1), which is robust against an adversary who may arbitrarily choose and corrupt an almost-linear number N1−o(1) of physical qudits at each time step. This robustness significantly improves upon prior fault-tolerance theorems, which assumed corruptions were either local and stochastic, or else only act on a polynomially vanishing fraction of qudits.
Our fault-tolerance scheme addresses a key bottleneck towards constructing quantum PCPs via the circuit-to-Hamiltonian mapping of Anshu, Breuckmann, and Nguyen (STOC'24). More fundamentally, our result demonstrates that fault-tolerant quantum computation remains possible under noise models that are global, worst-case, and non-Markovian over the full duration of the computation, directly countering concerns that correlated noise could fundamentally undermine quantum fault tolerance.
Our construction is based on a new family of subsystem product codes we develop, which have large dimension and distance along with low-weight parity-checks, and which support transversal non-Clifford gates. We show how to perform single-shot fault-tolerant error correction on these codes using a Floquet-like procedure based on the local testability of classical tensor codes. We then obtain a universal fault-tolerance scheme using repeated code switching in a hypercubic qudit architecture. Finally, we recursively compose our scheme with itself to reduce an initially exponential qudit dimension down to a constant.
We construct the first known fault-tolerant scheme for injecting states into quantum error-correcting codes with constant space and time overhead. That is, we construct a family of constant-rate quantum error-correcting codes for which a set of bare physical qubits can be injected, i.e. fault-tolerantly encoded, into a code block. Similarly, a code state can be ejected, i.e. fault-tolerantly decoded, back into bare physical qubits. We show that these injection and ejection procedures succeed under circuit-level locally stochastic noise, while incurring just a small constant probability of corrupting each qubit, which is unavoidable for bare physical qubits. We also show how to perform fault-tolerant error correction and code-state preparation under locally stochastic noise. All of our gadgets can be implemented with constant quantum circuit depth (i.e. are single-shot), and with a number of physical qubits growing linearly with the number of logical qubits, assuming the ability to run polynomial-sized noiseless classical circuits on the side.
We construct our quantum codes by taking a high-dimensional hypergraph product of classical LDPC codes, which in turn are a simplified version of Spielman's linear-time encodable codes (STOC'95). As our resulting product codes are only resilient to physical errors occurring with non-uniform probabilities across qubits, we then show how to concatenate with inner codes of various sizes to obtain fault-tolerance against uniform noise.
Topological quantum codes are intrinsically fault-tolerant to local noise, and underlie the theory of topological phases of matter. We explore geometry to enhance the performance of topological quantum codes by rotating the four dimensional self-correcting quantum memory, and present codes targeted to both near-term and utility-scale quantum computers. We identify a full set of logical Clifford operations and with it design a universal fault-tolerant quantum architecture. Our design achieves single-shot error correction, significant reductions in required qubits, and low-depth logical operations. In turn, our proposed architecture relaxes the requirements for achieving fault tolerance and offers an efficient path for realization in several near-term quantum hardware implementations. Our [[96,6,8]] 4D Hadamard lattice code has low weight-6 stabilizers and depth-8 syndrome extraction circuits, a high pseudo-threshold of ∼0.01, and a logical error rate of ∼10−6 per logical qubit per round of error correction at 10−3 physical error rate under a standard circuit-level noise model. A Clifford-complete logical gate set is presented, including a constructive and efficient method for Clifford gate synthesis.
The study of quantum memories out of thermal equilibrium is motivated both by the need for memories that withstand realistic noise in fault-tolerant quantum computers and by the fundamental question of when quantum memory can emerge in autonomous many-body systems. We establish a general equivalence between CSS-based quantum memories subject to Pauli noise and classical memories via two associated probabilistic processes. In the asynchronous setting, where the quantum dynamics is generated by a Lindbladian, we identify a broad class of syndrome-based Lindbladians for which the quantum memory problem is equivalent to memory in continuous-time classical Markov dynamics. In the synchronous setting, we introduce syndrome-based probabilistic cellular automata (SPCAs) and establish a one-to-one correspondence between their classical memories and CSS-based quantum memories under local quantum channels. This framework provides a systematic route for deriving and constructing quantum memories from classical probabilistic processes, and recovers known results, including the fact that the 4D toric code is a quantum memory in the presence of thermal noise.
As an application, we give the first rigorous proof that the 4D toric code with Toom's rule is a quantum memory in the presence of local Pauli noise, provided the error is below a constant threshold. We prove this both for the corresponding synchronous, PCA-type quantum dynamics and for a Floquet Lindbladian. More generally, we show that classical memory in an SPCA can be lifted to a quantum memory under Floquet Lindbladian dynamics; whether this can be done with a time-independent Lindbladian remains open. Our results provide a general framework for relating classical and quantum memory, shed light on the conditions for fully autonomous quantum memories, and may guide the construction of provable autonomous quantum memories in low dimensions.
Fault-tolerant quantum computation traditionally incurs substantial resource overhead, with both qubit and time overheads scaling polylogarithmically with the size of the computation. While prior work by Gottesman showed that constant qubit overhead is achievable under stochastic noise using quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes, it has remained an open question whether similar guarantees hold under more general, non-stochastic noise models. In this work, we address this question by considering a general circuit-level noise model defined via the diamond norm, which captures both stochastic and non-stochastic noise, including coherent and amplitude damping noise. We prove that constant qubit overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation is achievable in this general setting, using QLDPC codes with constant rate and linear minimum distance. To establish our result, we develop a fault-tolerant error correction scheme and a method for implementing logic gates under general circuit noise. These results extend the theoretical foundations of fault-tolerant quantum computation and offer new directions for fault-tolerant architectures under realistic noise models.