In this paper, from special code chains
C1⊇C2 ⊇C3such that
C1⊥h⊆C3and
C2⊥h⊆C2, some Hermitian dual-containing (HDC) matrix-product (MP) codes are presented, where
C3is not HDC. By studying some constacyclic codes of lengths
n=q2±1and
n=2q2−1, we construct many HDC MP codes of length
3n. Consequently, many
q-ary quantum codes with larger designed distance
d≥q+1are obtained from these MP codes, where
4≤q≤9.
The matrix-product (MP) code
CA,k:=[C1,C2,…,Ck]⋅A with a non-singular by column (NSC) matrix
A plays an important role in constructing good quantum error-correcting codes. In this paper, we study the MP code when the defining matrix
A satisfies the condition that
AA† is
(D,τ)-monomial. We give an explicit formula for calculating the dimension of the Hermitian hull of a MP code. We provide the necessary and sufficient conditions that a MP code is Hermitian dual-containing (HDC), almost Hermitian dual-containing (AHDC), Hermitian self-orthogonal (HSO), almost Hermitian self-orthogonal (AHSO), and Hermitian LCD, respectively. We theoretically determine the number of all possible ways involving the relationships among the constituent codes to yield a MP code with these properties, respectively. We give alternative necessary and sufficient conditions for a MP code to be AHDC and AHSO, respectively, and show several cases where a MP code is not AHDC or AHSO. We provide the construction methods of HDC and AHDC MP codes, including those with optimal minimum distance lower bounds.