Quantum error correction codes (QECCs) can be constructed from the known classical coding paradigm by exploiting the inherent isomorphism between the classical and quantum regimes, while also addressing the challenges imposed by the strange laws of quantum physics. In this spirit, this paper provides deep insights into the duality of quantum and classical coding theory, hence aiming for bridging the gap between them. Explicitly, we survey the rich history of both classical as well as quantum codes. We then provide a comprehensive slow-paced tutorial for constructing stabilizer-based QECCs from arbitrary binary as well as quaternary codes, as exemplified by the dual-containing and non-dual-containing Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, non-CSS codes and entanglement-assisted codes. Finally, we apply our discussions to two popular code families, namely to the family of Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem as well as of convolutional codes and provide detailed design examples for both their classical as well as their quantum versions.
Quantum error correction codes (QECCs) can be constructed from the known classical coding paradigm by exploiting the inherent isomorphism between the classical and quantum regimes, while also addressing the challenges imposed by the strange laws of quantum physics. In this spirit, this paper provides deep insights into the duality of quantum and classical coding theory, hence aiming for bridging the gap between them. Explicitly, we survey the rich history of both classical as well as quantum codes. We then provide a comprehensive slow-paced tutorial for constructing stabilizer-based QECCs from arbitrary binary as well as quaternary codes, as exemplified by the dual-containing and non-dual-containing Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, non-CSS codes and entanglement-assisted codes. Finally, we apply our discussions to two popular code families, namely to the family of Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem as well as of convolutional codes and provide detailed design examples for both their classical as well as their quantum versions.
Quantum error correction (QEC) codes protect quantum information from errors due to decoherence. Many of them also serve as prototypical models for exotic topological quantum matters. Investigating the behavior of the QEC codes under decoherence sheds light on not only the codes' robustness against errors but also new out-of-equilibrium quantum phases driven by decoherence. The phase transitions, including the error threshold, of the decohered QEC codes can be probed by the systems' R\'enyi entropies SR with different R\'enyi indices R. In this paper, we study the general construction of the statistical models that characterize the R\'enyi entropies of QEC codes decohered by Pauli noise. We show that these statistical models can be organized into a ``tapestry'' woven by rich duality relations among them. For Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes with bit-flip and phase-flip errors, we show that each R\'enyi entropy is captured by a pair of dual statistical models with randomness. For $R=2,3,\ensuremath{\infty}$, there are additional dualities that map between the two error types, relating the critical bit-flip and phase-flip error rates of the decoherence-induced phase transitions in the CSS codes. For CSS codes with an ``em symmetry'' between the X-type and the Z-type stabilizers, the dualities with $R=2,3,\ensuremath{\infty}$ become self-dualities with super-universal self-dual error rates. These self-dualities strongly constrain the phase transitions of the code signaled by ${S}_{R=2,3,\ensuremath{\infty}}$. For general stabilizer codes decohered by generic Pauli noise, we also construct the statistical models that characterize the systems' entropies and obtain general duality relations between Pauli noise with different error rates.
The employment of quantum error correction codes (QECCs) within quantum computers potentially offers a reliability improvement for both quantum computation and communications tasks. However, the laws of quantum mechanics prevent us from directly invoking the mature family of classical error correction codes in the quantum domain. In order to circumvent the associated problems, the notion of quantum stabilizer codes (QSCs) was proposed in conjunction with syndrome-based decoding in the quantum regime. However, most of the powerful QSC schemes require long codewords for achieving a high performance, which potentially imposes additional challenges for implementation concerning their implementation, since their decoding may require longer than the quantum circuit's coherence time. Hence at the time of writing, QSCs exhibiting short to moderate codeword lengths are preferable. We commence by describing the pivotal problem encountered by classical error-correction codes, which also emerges when designing the QSCs, namely the intrinsic trade-off between the minimum distance versus coding rate. The complete formulation of this particular trade-off does not exist, but several lower and upper bounds can be found in the literature. It has been shown that a substantial gap can be observed between the upper and lower bound of the minimum distance, given the codeword length and the quantum coding rate. Hence, we propose an appealingly simple and invertible analytical approximation, for characterizing the trade-off between the quantum coding rate and the minimum distance of QSCs as well as their corresponding quantum bit error rate (QBER) performance upper-bound. For example, for a half-rate QSC having a codeword length of n = 128, the minimum distance is bounded by 11 < d < 22, while our approximation yields a minimum distance of d = 17 for the above-mentioned code. Next, we link this parametric study of the minimum distance versus quantum coding rate to the popular QSCs, namely to the family of quantum topological error correction codes (QTECCs). In order to construct the classical-to-quantum isomorphism, we conceive and investigate the family of classical topological error correction codes (TECCs), assuming that the bits of a codeword can be arranged in a lattice structure. We then present the classical-to-quantum isomorphism to pave the way for constructing their dual pairs in the quantum domain, which are the QTECCs. Finally, we characterize the performance of QTECCs in the face of the quantum depolarizing channel in terms of both their QBER and fidelity. Specifically, we demonstrate that for quantum coding rate rQ ~ 0, the threshold probability of the QBER below which the colour, rotated-surface, surface, and toric codes become capable of improving the uncoded QBER are given by 1.8 ×10-2, 1.3 ×10-2, 6.3 ×10-2 and 6.8 ×10-2, respectively. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that we can achieve beneficial fidelity improvements above the minimum fidelity of 0.94, 0.97 and 0.99 by employing the rQ = 1/7 colour code, the rQ = 1/9 rotated-surface code, and the rQ = 1/13 surface code, respectively. However, QSCs require additional quantum gates for their employment. Incorporating more quantum gates for performing error correction potentially introduces further sources of quantum decoherence into quantum computers. In this scenario, the primary challenge is to find the sufficient condition required by each of the quantum gates for beneficially employing QECCs in order to yield reliability improvements, given that the quantum gates utilized by the QECCs also introduce quantum decoherence. In this treatise, we approach this problem by firstly presenting the general framework of protecting quantum gates by the amalgamation of the transversal configuration of quantum gates and QSCs, which can be viewed as syndrome-based QECCs. Secondly, we provide examples of the advocated framework by invoking QTECCs for protecting both transversal Hadamard gates and controlled (CNOT) gates. Both our simulation and analytical results explicitly show that by utilizing QTECCs, the fidelity of the quantum gates can be beneficially improved, provided that quantum gates satisfying a certain minimum depolarization fidelity threshold (Fth) are available. For instance, for protecting transversal Hadamard gates, the minimum fidelity values required for each of the gates in order to attain fidelity improvements are 99.74%, 99.73%, 99.87%, and 99.86%, when they are protected by colour, rotated-surface, surface, and toric codes, respectively. Unfortunately, these specific Fth values can only be obtained for a very large number of physical qubits (n → ∞), when the quantum coding rate of the QTECCs approaches zero (rQ → 0). Finally, in order to conceive QSCs exhibiting a high quantum coding rate, we modify the construction of QTECCs for conceiving a low-complexity concatenated quantum turbocode (QTC). The above-mentioned high quantum coding rate is obtained by combining the quantum-domain version of short-block codes (SBCs) also known as single parity-check (SPC) codes as the outer codes and quantum unity-rate codes (QURCs) as the inner codes. Despite its design simplicity, the proposed QTC yields a near-hashing-bound error correction performance. For instance, compared to the best half-rate QTC known in the literature, namely the quantum irregular convolutional codes (QIrCCs) combined with the QURC scheme, which operates at the distance of D = 0.037 from the quantum hashing bound, our novel QSBC-QURC scheme can operate at the lower distance of D = 0:029. It is also worth mentioning that this is the first instantiation of QTCs capable of adjusting the quantum encoders according to the quantum coding rate required for mitigating the Pauli errors imposed by the time-variant depolarizing probabilities of the quantum channel.
Among various classes of quantum error correcting codes (QECCs), non-stabilizer codes have rich properties and are of theoretical and practical interest. Decoding non-stabilizer codes is, however, a highly non-trivial task. In this paper, we show that a decoding circuit for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes can be straightforwardly extended to handle general QECCs. The key to the extension lies in the use of a pair of classical-quantum (CQ) codes associated with the QECC to be decoded. The decoding error of the proposed decoding circuit depends on the classical decoding errors of the CQ codes and their degree of complementarity. We demonstrate the power of the decoding circuit in a toy model of the black hole information paradox, improving decoding errors compared to previous results. In addition, we reveal that black hole dynamics may optimally encode quantum information but poorly encode classical information.
Quantum parallel processing techniques are capable of solving certain complex problems at a substantially lower complexity than their classical counterparts. From the perspective of telecommunications, this quantum-domain parallel processing provides a plausible solution for achieving full-search based multi-stream detection, which is vital for future gigabit-wireless systems. The peculiar laws of quantum mechanics have also spurred interest in the absolutely secure quantum-based communication systems. Unfortunately, quantum decoherence imposes a hitherto insurmountable impairment on the practical implementation of quantum computation as well as on quantum communication systems, which may be overcome with the aid of efficient error correction codes. In this thesis, we design error correction codes for the quantum domain, which is an intricate journey from the realm of classical channel coding theory to that of the Quantum Error Correction Codes (QECCs). Since quantum-based communication systems are capable of supporting the transmission of both classical and quantum information, we initially focus our attention on the code design for entanglementassisted classical communication over the quantum depolarizing channel. We conceive an Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart aided near-capacity classical-quantum code design, which invokes a classical Irregular Convolutional Code (IRCC) and a Unity Rate Code (URC) in conjunction with our proposed soft-decision aided SuperDense Code (SD). Hence, it is referred to as an ‘IRCC-URCSD’ arrangement. The proposed scheme is intrinsically amalgamated both with 2-qubit as well as 3-qubit SD coding protocols and it is benchmarked against the corresponding entanglement-assisted classical capacity. Since the IRCC-URC-SD scheme is a bit-based design, it incurs a capacity loss. As a further advance, we design a symbol based concatenated code design, referred to as a symbol-based ‘CC-URC-SD’, which relies on a single-component classical Convolutional Code (CC). Additionally, for the sake of reducing the associated decoding complexity, we also investigate the impact of the constraint length of the convolutional code on the achievable performance. Our initial designs, namely IRCC-URC-SD and CC-URC-SD, exploit redundancy in the classical domain. By contrast, QECCs relying on the quantum-domain redundancy are indispensable for conceiving a quantum communication system supporting the transmission of quantum information and also for quantum computing. Therefore, we next provide insights into the transformation from the family of classical codes to the class of quantum codes known as ‘Quantum Stabilizer Codes’ (QSC), which invoke the classical syndrome decoding. Particularly, we detail the underlying quantum-to classical isomorphism, which facilitates the design of meritorious families of QECCs from the known classical codes. We further study the syndrome decoding techniques operating over classical channels, which may be exploited for decoding QSCs. In this context, we conceive a syndrome-based block decoding approach for the classical Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation (TTCM), whose performance is investigated for transmission over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel as well as over an uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel. Pursuing our objective of designing efficient QECCs, we next consider the construction of Hashingbound-approaching concatenated quantum codes. In this quest, we appropriately adapt the conventional non-binary EXIT charts for Quantum Turbo Codes (QTCs) by exploiting the intrinsic quantumto- classical isomorphism. We further demonstrate the explicit benefit of our EXIT-chart technique for achieving a Hashing-bound-approaching code design. We also propose a generically applicable structure for Quantum Irregular Convolutional Codes (QIRCCs), which can be dynamically adapted to a specific application scenario with the aid of the EXIT charts. More explicitly, we provide a detailed design example by constructing a 10-subcode QIRCC and use it as an outer code in a concatenated quantum code structure for evaluating its performance. Working further in the direction of iterative code structures, we survey Quantum Low Density Parity Check (QLPDC) codes from the perspective of code design as well as in terms of their decoding algorithms. Furthermore, we propose a radically new class of high-rate row-circulant Quasi-Cyclic QLDPC (QC-QLDPC) codes, which can be constructed from arbitrary row-circulant classical QC LDPC matrices. We also conceive a modified non-binary decoding algorithm for homogeneous Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS)-type QLDPC codes, which is capable of alleviating the problems imposed by the unavoidable length-4 cycles. Our modified decoder outperforms the state-of-the-art decoders in terms of their Word Error Rate (WER) performance, despite imposing a reduced decoding complexity. Finally, we intricately amalgamate our modified decoder with the classic Uniformly-ReWeighted Belief Propagation (URW-BP) for the sake of achieving further performance improvement.
In this paper, we introduce a unified framework to construct entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes, including additive and nonadditive codes, based on the codeword stabilized framework on subsystems. The codeword stabilized (CWS) framework is a scheme to construct quantum error-correcting codes (QECCs) including both additive and nonadditive codes, and gives a method to construct a QECC from a classical error-correcting code in standard form. Entangled pairs of qubits (ebits) can be used to improve capacity of quantum error correction. In addition, it gives a method to overcome the dual-containing constraint. Operator quantum error correction (OQEC) gives a general framework to construct quantum error-correcting codes. We construct OQEC codes with ebits based on the CWS framework. This new scheme, entanglement-assisted operator codeword stabilized (EAOCWS) quantum codes, is the most general framework we know of to construct both additive and nonadditive codes from classical error-correcting codes. We describe the formalism of our scheme, demonstrate the construction with examples, and give several EAOCWS codes.
Noise is one of the central obstacles to building useful quantum computers, and quantum error correction (QEC) provides the framework for protecting quantum information against it. Unlike classical error correction, QEC must preserve fragile quantum states without copying them, measuring them directly, or destroying the information they encode. Driven by rapid progress in both theory and experiment, this challenge has grown into one of the most active areas of quantum information science. This tutorial gives a guided introduction to modern QEC, developing the core concepts of codes, syndromes, stabilizers, decoding, and fault tolerance before connecting them to major code families and current research directions. We cover both established constructions and newer developments, including topological and subsystem codes, bosonic and qudit codes, dynamical codes, and quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes. The emphasis is on building operational understanding: explaining not only what the main objects are, but how they are used in code design, error diagnosis, decoding, and fault-tolerant computation. The tutorial is intended for newcomers seeking a first path through QEC, as well as researchers looking for a coherent reference for the concepts, code families, and tools that arise in current work.