Constructing new quantum codes and understanding their error resilience are central challenges in the development of robust quantum memories. Topological codes are particularly promising due to their favorable error-correcting properties and their connections to phases of matter in many-body physics. In this thesis, we explore the interplay between classical Ising models and quantum error correction through subsystem symmetries, fracton topological order, and Kramers-Wannier-type duality. We study two three-dimensional classical self-dual Ising models with subsystem symmetries, the Tetrahedral Ising model and the Fractal Ising model, investigating their thermal behavior, their relation to fracton phases through subsystem-symmetry gauging, and the properties of the resulting fracton codes. Using a statistical-mechanical mapping, we determine the optimal code-capacity threshold of the Checkerboard code to be
0.107(3), which saturates the theoretical limit for CSS codes and represents the highest optimal error threshold among known three-dimensional codes. We relate this saturation to a generalized entropy relation for classical spin models satisfying a Kramers-Wannier-type duality, and argue how this prediction extends to CSS codes with zero encoding rate whose
X- and
Z-noise models map to classically dual spin models. These findings establish fracton codes as highly resilient candidates for quantum memories and demonstrate the power of the statistical-mechanical framework, together with its duality predictions, in analyzing and constructing robust quantum error-correcting codes.
Quantum error correction was invented to allow for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Systems with topological order turned out to give a natural physical realization of quantum error correcting codes (QECC) in their ground spaces. More recently, in the context of the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, it has been argued that eigenstates of CFTs with a holographic dual should also form QECCs. These two examples raise the question of how generally eigenstates of many-body models form quantum codes. In this Letter we establish new connections between quantum chaos and translation invariance in many-body spin systems, on one hand, and approximate quantum error correcting codes (AQECC), on the other hand. We first observe that quantum chaotic systems obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis have eigenstates forming approximate quantum error-correcting codes. Then we show that AQECC can be obtained probabilistically from translation-invariant energy eigenstates of every translation-invariant spin chain, including integrable models. Applying this result to 1D classical systems, we describe a method for using local symmetries to construct parent Hamiltonians that embed these codes into the low-energy subspace of gapless 1D quantum spin chains. As explicit examples we obtain local AQECC in the ground space of the 1D ferromagnetic Heisenberg model and the Motzkin spin chain model with periodic boundary conditions, thereby yielding nonstabilizer codes in the ground space and low energy subspace of physically plausible 1D gapless models.
Quantum information is prone to suffer from errors caused by the so-called decoherence, which describes the loss in coherence of quantum states associated to their interactions with the surrounding environment. This decoherence phenomenon is present in every quantum information task, be it transmission, processing or even storage of quantum information. Consequently, the protection of quantum information via quantum error correction codes (QECC) is of paramount importance to construct fully operational quantum computers. Understanding environmental decoherence processes and the way they are modeled is fundamental in order to construct effective error correction methods capable of protecting quantum information. Moreover, quantum channel models that are efficiently implementable and manageable on classical computers are required in order to design and simulate such error correction schemes. In this article, we present a survey of decoherence models, reviewing the manner in which these models can be approximated into quantum Pauli channel models, which can be efficiently implemented on classical computers. We also explain how certain families of quantum error correction codes can be entirely simulated in the classical domain, without the explicit need of a quantum computer. A quantum error correction code for the approximated channel is also a correctable code for the original channel, and its performance can be obtained by Monte Carlo simulations on a classical computer.
We study the error thresholds of a new topological quantum error-correcting code under the independent bit-flip and phase-flip noisy channel. By mapping to classical spin-glass models, we find that if Pauli X and Z errors are equally probable, the threshold of vertex syndromes is improved by 30% compared to that of the toric code, while the threshold of plaquette syndromes is lowered. Both thresholds increase when the Z component is less likely than the X component, reaching 0.5 if the Z component is absent. An analytical proof justifies this special case of perfect correctability, and a disordered version of Peierls's argument establishes a lower bound for the vertex-syndrome threshold.