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arXiv:quant-ph/9802070 · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Monotonicity of the quantum linear programming bound

Eric M. Rains

Published Jan 1, 1999• 13 citations
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Abstract

The most powerful technique known at present for bounding the size of quantum codes of prescribed minimum distance is the quantum linear programming bound. Unlike the classical linear programming bound, it is not immediately obvious that if the quantum linear programming constraints are satisfiable for dimension K, then the constraints can be satisfied for all lower dimensions. We show that the quantum linear programming bound is monotonic in this sense, and give an explicitly monotonic reformulation.

DOI
10.1109/18.796387

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The most powerful technique known at present for bounding the size of quantum codes of prescribed minimum distance is the quantum linear programming bound. Unlike the classical linear programming bound, it is not immediately obvious that if the quantum linear programming constraints are satisfiable for dimension K, then the constraints can be satisfied for all lower dimensions. We show that the quantum linear programming bound is monotonic in this sense, and give an explicitly monotonic reformulation.
Linear programming approaches have been applied to derive upper bounds on the size of classical and quantum codes. In this paper, we derive similar results for general quantum codes with entanglement assistance by considering a type of split weight enumerator. After deriving the MacWilliams identities for these enumerators, we are able to prove algebraic linear programming bounds, such as the Singleton bound, the Hamming bound, and the first linear programming bound. Our Singleton bound and Hamming bound are more general than the previous bounds for entanglement-assisted quantum stabilizer codes. In addition, we show that the first linear programming bound improves the Hamming bound when the relative distance is sufficiently large. On the other hand, we obtain additional constraints on the size of Pauli subgroups for quantum codes, which allow us to improve the linear programming bounds on the minimum distance of quantum codes of small length. In particular, we show that there is no [[27, 15, 5]] or [[28, 14, 6]] stabilizer code. We also discuss the existence of some entanglement-assisted quantum stabilizer codes with maximal entanglement. As a result, the upper and lower bounds on the minimum distance of maximal-entanglement quantum stabilizer codes with length up to 20 are significantly improved.
A fundamental problem in quantum coding theory is to determine the maximum size of quantum codes of given block length and distance. A recent work introduced bounds based on semidefinite programming, strengthening the well-known quantum linear programming bounds. However, floating-point inaccuracies prevent the extraction of rigorous non-existence proofs from the numerical methods. Here, we address this by providing rational infeasibility certificates for a range of quantum codes. Using a clustered low-rank solver with heuristic rounding to algebraic expressions, we can improve upon 181818 upper bounds on the maximum size of nnn-qubit codes with 6≤n≤196 \leq n \leq 196≤n≤19. Our work highlights the practicality and scalability of semidefinite programming for quantum coding bounds.
The most popular class of quantum error correcting codes is stabilizer codes. Binary quantum stabilizer codes have been well studied, and Calderbank, Rains, Shor and Sloane (July 1998) have constructed a table of upper bounds on the minimum distance of these codes using linear programming methods. However, not much is known in the case of nonbinary stabilizer codes. In this thesis, we establish a bridge between selforthogonal classical codes over the finite field containing q2 elements and quantum codes, extending and unifying previous work by Matsumoto and Uyematsu (2000), Ashikhmin and Knill (November 2001), Kim and Walker (2004). We construct a table of upper bounds on the minimum distance of the stabilizer codes using linear programming methods that are tighter than currently known bounds. Finally, we derive code construction techniques that will help us find new codes from existing ones. All these results help us to gain a better understanding of the theory of nonbinary stabilizer codes.
It is reasonable to expect the theory of quantum codes to be simplified in the case of codes of minimum distance 2; thus it makes sense to examine such codes in the hopes that techniques that prove effective there will generalize. With this in mind, we present a number of results on codes of minimum distance 2. We first compute the linear programming bound on the dimension of such a code, then show that this bound can only be attained when the code either is of even length, or is of length 3 or 5. We next consider questions of uniqueness, showing that the optimal code of length 2 or 1 is unique (implying that the well-known one-qubit-in-five single-error correcting code is unique), and presenting nonadditive optimal codes of all greater even lengths. Finally, we compute the full automorphism group of the more important distance 2 codes, allowing us to determine the full automorphism group of any GF(4)-linear code.
This paper is concerned with bounds for quantum error-correcting codes. Using the quantum MacWilliams (1972, 1977) identities, we generalize the linear programming approach from classical coding theory to the quantum case. Using this approach, we obtain Singleton-type, Hamming-type, and the first linear-programming-type bounds for quantum codes. Using the special structure of linear quantum codes, we derive an upper bound that is better than both Hamming and the first linear programming bounds on some subinterval of rates.
We prove a conjecture of Yu, Lai, and Oh: their strengthened quantum Hamming bounds, a family that interpolates between Hamming-type bounds and the Singleton bound, hold for all quantum codes of dimension K>1K>1K>1, including impure and nonadditive codes. The result covers every integer local dimension p≥2p\ge2p≥2, not necessarily a prime power, every integer t≥1t\ge1t≥1, both distances 2t+12t+12t+1 and 2t+22t+22t+2, and every interpolation parameter e∈{0,…,t}e\in\{0,\ldots,t\}e∈{0,…,t}. The case e=0e=0e=0 implies the ordinary quantum Hamming bound for general codes, recently proved by Zhang and Chen. Yu, Lai, and Oh proved their bounds for pure codes and for general codes of distance three or four. More generally, for every integer p≥2p\ge2p≥2 and every quantum code of length nnn, dimension K>1K>1K>1 and distance d≥3d\ge3d≥3, we prove Kf(0)≤pnEf(X)Kf(0)\le p^n\mathbb{E} f(X)Kf(0)≤pnEf(X), where X∼Bin⁡(n,1−p−2)X\sim\operatorname{Bin}(n,1-p^{-2})X∼Bin(n,1−p−2), for every real polynomial fff of degree less than ddd that is nonnegative on {0,…,n}\{0,\ldots,n\}{0,…,n} and positive at zero. For pure codes this inequality is implicit in the argument of Yu, Lai, and Oh. The proof uses the linear-programming method with quantum weight enumerators.