Subsystem Code Research Articles

Pauli topological subsystem codes from Abelian anyon theories

We construct Pauli topological subsystem codes characterized by arbitrary two-dimensional Abelian anyon theories–this includes anyon theories with degenerate braiding relations and those without a gapped boundary to the vacuum. Our work both extends the classification of two-dimensional Pauli topological subsystem codes to systems of composite-dimensional qudits and establishes that the classification is at least as rich as that of Abelian anyon theories. We exemplify the construction with topological subsystem codes defined on four-dimensional qudits based on the Z4(1) anyon theory with degenerate braiding relations and the chiral semion theory–both of which cannot be captured by topological stabilizer codes. The construction proceeds by "gauging out" certain anyon types of a topological stabilizer code. This amounts to defining a gauge group generated by the stabilizer group of the topological stabilizer code and a set of anyonic string operators for the anyon types that are gauged out. The resulting topological subsystem code is characterized by an anyon theory containing a proper subset of the anyons of the topological stabilizer code. We thereby show that every Abelian anyon theory is a subtheory of a stack of toric codes and a certain family of twisted quantum doubles that generalize the double semion anyon theory. We further prove a number of general statements about the logical operators of translation invariant topological subsystem codes and define their associated anyon theories in terms of higher-form symmetries.

Floquet Codes without Parent Subsystem Codes

We propose a new class of error-correcting dynamic codes in two and three dimensions that has no explicit connection to any parent subsystem code. The two-dimensional code, which we call the CSS (Calderbank-Shor-Steane) honeycomb code, is geometrically similar to that of the honeycomb code by Hastings and Haah and also dynamically embeds an instantaneous toric code. However, unlike the honeycomb code, it possesses an explicit CSS structure and its gauge checks do not form a subsystem code. Nevertheless, we show that our dynamic protocol conserves logical information and possesses a threshold for error correction. We generalize this construction to three dimensions and obtain a code that fault tolerantly alternates between realizing two type-I fracton models, the checkerboard and the X-cube model. Finally, we show the compatibility of our CSS honeycomb-code protocol and the honeycomb code by showing the possibility of randomly switching between the two protocols without information loss while still measuring error syndromes. We call this more general aperiodic structure “dynamic tree codes,” which we also generalize to three dimensions. We construct a probabilistic finite automaton prescription that generates dynamic tree codes correcting any single-qubit Pauli errors and can be viewed as a step toward the development of practical fault-tolerant random codes.1 MoreReceived 27 December 2022Accepted 21 April 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.4.020341Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum error correctionQuantum memoriesSurface code quantum computingTopological orderTopological phases of matterQuantum Information

Hexagonal matching codes with two-body measurements

Matching codes are stabilizer codes based on Kitaev’s honeycomb lattice model. The hexagonal form of these codes are particularly well-suited to the heavy-hexagon device layouts currently pursued in the hardware of IBM quantum. Here we show how the stabilizers of the code can be measured solely through two-body measurements that are native to the architecture. Though the subsystem code formed by these measurements has a trivial code space, the sequence in which they are measured allows the desired logical subspace to be preserved. This therefore achieves a result similar to the recently introduced Floquet codes, but via a completely different method. The process is then run on 27 and 65 qubit devices, to compare results with simulations for a standard error model. It is found that the results correspond well to simulations where the noise strength is similar to that found in the benchmarking of the devices. The best devices show results consistent with a noise model with an error probability of around 1.5%–2%.

Symmetry-Protected Infinite-Temperature Quantum Memory from Subsystem Codes

We study a mechanism whereby quantum information present in the initial state of a quantum many-body system can be protected for arbitrary times due to a combination of symmetry and spatial locality. Remarkably, the mechanism is sufficiently generic that the dynamics can be fully ergodic upon resolving the protecting symmetry and fixing the encoded quantum state, resulting in a quantum memory that persists up to infinite temperature. After exemplifying the mechanism in a strongly nonintegrable two-dimensional (2D) spin model inspired by the surface code, we find it has a natural interpretation in the language of noiseless subsystems and stabilizer subsystem codes. This interpretation yields a number of further examples, including a nonintegrable Hamiltonian with quantum memory based on the Bacon-Shor code. The lifetime of the encoded quantum information in these models is infinite provided that the dynamics respect the stabilizer symmetry of the underlying subsystem code. In the presence of symmetry-violating perturbations, we make contact with previous work leveraging the concept of prethermalization to show that the encoded quantum information can acquire a parametrically long lifetime under dynamics with an enlarged continuous symmetry group. The prethermalization mechanism hinges on the application of external fields that are much larger than the perturbations themselves. We identify conditions on the underlying subsystem code that enable such a prethermal enhancement of the memory lifetime.3 MoreReceived 28 October 2021Revised 15 February 2022Accepted 1 April 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.020330Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasQuantum memoriesQuantum InformationCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Dynamically Generated Logical Qubits

We present a quantum error correcting code with dynamically generated logical qubits. When viewed as a subsystem code, the code has no logical qubits. Nevertheless, our measurement patterns generate logical qubits, allowing the code to act as a fault-tolerant quantum memory. Our particular code gives a model very similar to the two-dimensional toric code, but each measurement is a two-qubit Pauli measurement.

Fault-Tolerant Logical Gates in Holographic Stabilizer Codes Are Severely Restricted

We evaluate the usefulness of holographic stabilizer codes for practical purposes by studying their allowed sets of fault-tolerantly implementable gates. We treat them as subsystem codes and show that the set of transversally implementable logical operations is contained in the Clifford group for sufficiently localized logical subsystems. As well as proving this concretely for several specific codes, we argue that this restriction naturally arises in any stabilizer subsystem code that comes close to capturing certain properties of holography. We extend these results to approximate encodings, locality-preserving gates, certain codes whose logical algebras have non-trivial centers, and discuss cases where restrictions can be made to other levels of the Clifford hierarchy. A few auxiliary results may also be of interest, including a general definition of entanglement wedge map for any subsystem code, and a thorough classification of different correctability properties for regions in a subsystem code.

Fractalizing quantum codes

We introduce "fractalization", a procedure by which spin models are extended to higher-dimensional "fractal" spin models. This allows us to interpret type-II fracton phases, fractal symmetry-protected topological phases, and more, in terms of well understood lower-dimensional spin models. Fractalization is also useful for deriving new spin models and quantum codes from known ones. We construct higher dimensional generalizations of fracton models that host extended fractal excitations. Finally, by applying fractalization to a 2D subsystem code, we produce a family of locally generated 3D subsystem codes that are conjectured to saturate a quantum information storage tradeoff bound.

On maximum-likelihood decoding with circuit-level errors

Error probability distribution associated with a given Clifford measurement circuit is described exactly in terms of the circuit error-equivalence group, or the circuit subsystem code previously introduced by Bacon, Flammia, Harrow, and Shi. This gives a prescription for maximum-likelihood decoding with a given measurement circuit. Marginal distributions for subsets of circuit errors are also analyzed; these generate a family of related asymmetric LDPC codes of varying degeneracy. More generally, such a family is associated with any quantum code. Implications for decoding highly-degenerate quantum codes are discussed.

Handling leakage with subsystem codes

Leakage is a particularly damaging error that occurs when a qubit state falls out of its two-level computational subspace. Compared to independent depolarizing noise, leaked qubits may produce many more configurations of harmful correlated errors during error-correction. In this work, we investigate different local codes in the low-error regime of a leakage gate error model. When restricting to bare-ancilla extraction, we observe that subsystem codes are good candidates for handling leakage, as their locality can limit damaging correlated errors. As a case study, we compare subspace surface codes to the subsystem surface codes introduced by Bravyi et al. In contrast to depolarizing noise, subsystem surface codes outperform same-distance subspace surface codes below error rates as high as ⪅ 7.5 × 10−4 while offering better per-qubit distance protection. Furthermore, we show that at low to intermediate distances, Bacon–Shor codes offer better per-qubit error protection against leakage in an ion-trap motivated error model below error rates as high as ⪅ 1.2 × 10−3. For restricted leakage models, this advantage can be extended to higher distances by relaxing to unverified two-qubit cat state extraction in the surface code. These results highlight an intrinsic benefit of subsystem code locality to error-corrective performance.

Optimal quantum subsystem codes in two dimensions

Given any two classical codes with parameters $[n_1,k,d_1]$ and $[n_2,k,d_2]$, we show how to construct a quantum subsystem code in 2-dimensions with parameters $[[N,K,D]]$ satisfying $N\le 2n_1n_2$, $K=k$, and $D=\min(d_1,d_2)$. These quantum codes are in the class of generalized Bacon-Shor codes introduced by Bravyi. We note that constructions of good classical codes can be used to construct quantum codes that saturate Bravyi's bound $KD=O(N)$ on the code parameters of 2-dimensional subsystem codes. One of these good constructions uses classical expander codes. This construction has the additional advantage of a linear time quantum decoder based on the classical Sipser-Spielman flip decoder. Finally, while the subsystem codes we create do not have asymptotic thresholds, we show how they can be gauge-fixed to certain hypergraph product codes that do.

Modeling noise and error correction for Majorana-based quantum computing

Majorana-based quantum computing seeks to use the non-local nature of Majorana zero modes to store and manipulate quantum information in a topologically protected way. While noise is anticipated to be significantly suppressed in such systems, finite temperature and system size result in residual errors. In this work, we connect the underlying physical error processes in Majorana-based systems to the noise models used in a fault tolerance analysis. Standard qubit-based noise models built from Pauli operators do not capture leading order noise processes arising from quasiparticle poisoning events, thus it is not obviousa priorithat such noise models can be usefully applied to a Majorana-based system. We develop stochastic Majorana noise models that are generalizations of the standard qubit-based models and connect the error probabilities defining these models to parameters of the physical system. Using these models, we compute pseudo-thresholds for thed=5Bacon-Shor subsystem code. Our results emphasize the importance of correlated errors induced in multi-qubit measurements. Moreover, we find that for sufficiently fast quasiparticle relaxation the errors are well described by Pauli operators. This work bridges the divide between physical errors in Majorana-based quantum computing architectures and the significance of these errors in a quantum error correcting code.

The Ryu–Takayanagi Formula from Quantum Error Correction

I argue that a version of the quantum-corrected Ryu-Takayanagi formula holds in any quantum error-correcting code. I present this result as a series of theorems of increasing generality, with the final statement expressed in the language of operator-algebra quantum error correction. In AdS/CFT this gives a "purely boundary" interpretation of the formula. I also extend a recent theorem, which established entanglement-wedge reconstruction in AdS/CFT, when interpreted as a subsystem code, to the more general, and I argue more physical, case of subalgebra codes. For completeness, I include a self-contained presentation of the theory of von Neumann algebras on finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, as well as the algebraic definition of entropy. The results confirm a close relationship between bulk gauge transformations, edge-modes/soft-hair on black holes, and the Ryu-Takayanagi formula. They also suggest a new perspective on the homology constraint, which basically is to get rid of it in a way that preserves the validity of the formula, but which removes any tension with the linearity of quantum mechanics. Moreover they suggest a boundary interpretation of the "bit threads" recently introduced by Freedman and Headrick.

Sparse Quantum Codes From Quantum Circuits

We describe a general method for turning quantum circuits into sparse quantum subsystem codes. The idea is to turn each circuit element into a set of low-weight gauge generators that enforce the input-output relations of that circuit element. Using this prescription, we can map an arbitrary stabilizer code into a new subsystem code with the same distance and number of encoded qubits but where all the generators have constant weight, at the cost of adding some ancilla qubits. With an additional overhead of ancilla qubits, the new code can also be made spatially local. Applying our construction to certain concatenated stabilizer codes yields families of subsystem codes with constant-weight generators and with minimum distance $d = n^{1-\epsilon}$, where $\epsilon = O(1/\sqrt{\log n})$. For spatially local codes in $D$ dimensions we nearly saturate a bound due to Bravyi and Terhal and achieve $d = n^{1-\epsilon-1/D}$. Previously the best code distance achievable with constant-weight generators in any dimension, due to Freedman, Meyer and Luo, was $O(\sqrt{n\log n})$ for a stabilizer code.

Quantum computation with realistic magic-state factories

Leading approaches to fault-tolerant quantum computation dedicate a significant portion of the hardware to computational factories that churn out high-fidelity ancillas called magic states. Consequently, efficient and realistic factory design is of paramount importance. Here we present the most detailed resource assessment to date of magic state factories within a surface code quantum computer, along the way introducing a number of new techniques. We show that the block codes of Bravyi and Haah [Phys. Rev. A 86, 052329 (2012)] have been systematically undervalued; we track correlated errors both numerically and analytically, providing fidelity estimates without appeal to the union bound. We also introduce a subsystem code realisation of these protocols with constant time and low ancilla cost. Additionally, we confirm that magic state factories have space-time costs that scale as a constant factor of surface code costs. We find that the magic state factory required for post-classical factoring can be as small as 6.3 million data qubits, ignoring ancilla qubits, assuming $10^{-4}$ error gates, and the availability of long range interactions.

Non-commuting two-local Hamiltonians for quantum error suppression

Physical constraints make it challenging to implement and control many-body interactions. For this reason, designing quantum information processes with Hamiltonians consisting of only one- and two-local terms is a worthwhile challenge. Enabling error suppression with two-local Hamiltonians is particularly challenging. A no-go theorem of Marvian and Lidar [Physical Review Letters 113(26), 260504 (2014)] demonstrates that, even allowing particles with high Hilbert-space dimension, it is impossible to protect quantum information from single-site errors by encoding in the ground subspace of any Hamiltonian containing only commuting two-local terms. Here, we get around this no-go result by encoding in the ground subspace of a Hamiltonian consisting of non-commuting two-local terms arising from the gauge operators of a subsystem code. Specifically, we show how to protect stored quantum information against single-qubit errors using a Hamiltonian consisting of sums of the gauge generators from Bacon-Shor codes [Physical Review A 73(1), 012340 (2006)] and generalized-Bacon-Shor code [Physical Review A 83(1), 012320 (2011)]. Our results imply that non-commuting two-local Hamiltonians have more error-suppressing power than commuting two-local Hamiltonians. While far from providing full fault tolerance, this approach improves the robustness achievable in near-term implementable quantum storage and adiabatic quantum computations, reducing the number of higher-order terms required to encode commonly used adiabatic Hamiltonians such as the Ising Hamiltonians common in adiabatic quantum optimization and quantum annealing.

Error Suppression for Hamiltonian-Based Quantum Computation Using Subsystem Codes.

We present general conditions for quantum error suppression for Hamiltonian-based quantum computation using subsystem codes. This involves encoding the Hamiltonian performing the computation using an error detecting subsystem code and the addition of a penalty term that commutes with the encoded Hamiltonian. The scheme is general and includes the stabilizer formalism of both subspace and subsystem codes as special cases. We derive performance bounds and show that complete error suppression results in the large penalty limit. To illustrate the power of subsystem-based error suppression, we introduce fully two-local constructions for protection against local errors of the swap gate of adiabatic gate teleportation and the Ising chain in a transverse field.

Simple scheme for encoding and decoding a qubit in unknown state for various topological codes.

We present a scheme for encoding and decoding an unknown state for CSS codes, based on syndrome measurements. We illustrate our method by means of Kitaev toric code, defected-lattice code, topological subsystem code and 3D Haah code. The protocol is local whenever in a given code the crossings between the logical operators consist of next neighbour pairs, which holds for the above codes. For subsystem code we also present scheme in a noisy case, where we allow for bit and phase-flip errors on qubits as well as state preparation and syndrome measurement errors. Similar scheme can be built for two other codes. We show that the fidelity of the protected qubit in the noisy scenario in a large code size limit is of , where p is a probability of error on a single qubit per time step. Regarding Haah code we provide noiseless scheme, leaving the noisy case as an open problem.

Fault-tolerant logical gates in quantum error-correcting codes

Recently, Bravyi and K\"onig have shown that there is a tradeoff between fault-tolerantly implementable logical gates and geometric locality of stabilizer codes. They consider locality-preserving operations which are implemented by a constant depth geometrically local circuit and are thus fault-tolerant by construction. In particular, they shown that, for local stabilizer codes in D spatial dimensions, locality preserving gates are restricted to a set of unitary gates known as the D-th level of the Clifford hierarchy. In this paper, we elaborate this idea and provide several extensions and applications of their characterization in various directions. First, we present a new no-go theorem for self-correcting quantum memory. Namely, we prove that a three-dimensional stabilizer Hamiltonian with a locality-preserving implementation of a non-Clifford gate cannot have a macroscopic energy barrier. Second, we prove that the code distance of a D-dimensional local stabilizer code with non-trivial locality-preserving m-th level Clifford logical gate is upper bounded by $O(L^{D+1-m})$. For codes with non-Clifford gates (m>2), this improves the previous best bound by Bravyi and Terhal. Third we prove that a qubit loss threshold of codes with non-trivial transversal m-th level Clifford logical gate is upper bounded by 1/m. As such, no family of fault-tolerant codes with transversal gates in increasing level of the Clifford hierarchy may exist. This result applies to arbitrary stabilizer and subsystem codes, and is not restricted to geometrically-local codes. Fourth we extend the result of Bravyi and K\"onig to subsystem codes. A technical difficulty is that, unlike stabilizer codes, the so-called union lemma does not apply to subsystem codes. This problem is avoided by assuming the presence of error threshold in a subsystem code, and the same conclusion as Bravyi-K\"onig is recovered.

Quasiparticle localisation via frequent measurements

Topological quantum memories in two dimensions are not thermally stable, since once a quasiparticle excitation is created, it will delocalise at no energy cost. This places an upper bound on the lifetime of quantum information stored in them. We address this issue for a topological subsystem code introduced in [Bravyi S.{\em et al.}, Quant.~Inf.~Comp.~13(11):0963]. By frequently measuring the gauge operators of the code, a technique known as Operator Quantum Zeno Effect [Li Y. {\em et al.}, preprint arXiv:1305.2464], the dynamics responsible for quasiparticle motion is suppressed, and can eventually be ``frozen" in the large frequency limit. A feature of this method is that the density operator of the code does not commute with the measurement operators, so the density matrix will be randomised after a few measurements. However the logical operators commute with the measurement operators and are thus protected.

Quantum subsystems: Exploring the complementarity of quantum privacy and error correction

This paper addresses and expands on the contents of the recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 030502 (2013)] discussing private quantum subsystems. Here we prove several previously presented results, including a condition for a given random unitary channel to not have a private subspace (although this does not mean that private communication cannot occur, as was previously demonstrated via private subsystems) and algebraic conditions that characterize when a general quantum subsystem or subspace code is private for a quantum channel. These conditions can be regarded as the private analogue of the Knill-Laflamme conditions for quantum error correction, and we explore how the conditions simplify in some special cases. The bridge between quantum cryptography and quantum error correction provided by complementary quantum channels motivates the study of a new, more general definition of quantum error correcting code, and we initiate this study here. We also consider the concept of complementarity for the general notion of private quantum subsystem.