Catalytic quantum error correction

We develop the theory of entanglement-assisted quantum error correcting (EAQEC) codes, a generalization of the stabilizer formalism to the setting in which the sender and receiver have access to pre-shared entanglement. Conventional stabilizer codes are equivalent to dual-containing symplectic codes. In contrast, EAQEC codes do not require the dual-containing condition, which greatly simplifies their construction. We show how any quaternary classical code can be made into a EAQEC code. In particular, efficient modern codes, like LDPC codes, which attain the Shannon capacity, can be made into EAQEC codes attaining the hashing bound. In a quantum computation setting, EAQEC codes give rise to catalytic quantum codes which maintain a region of inherited noiseless qubits. We also give an alternative construction of EAQEC codes by making classical entanglement assisted codes coherent.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures. Notation change: [[n,k;c]] instead of [[n,k-c;c]

Quantum Error Correction via Codes over GF(4)

The problem of finding quantum error-correcting codes is transformed into the problem of finding additive codes over the field GF(4) which are self-orthogonal with respect to a certain trace inner product. Many new codes and new bounds are presented, as well as a table of upper and lower bounds on such codes of length up to 30 qubits.Comment: Latex, 46 pages. To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Replaced Sept. 24, 1996, to correct a number of minor errors. Replaced Sept. 10, 1997. The second section has been completely rewritten, and should hopefully be much clearer. We have also added a new section discussing the developments of the past year. Finally, we again corrected a number of minor error

Geometric approach to error correcting codes and reconstruction of signals

We develop an approach through geometric functional analysis to error correcting codes and to reconstruction of signals from few linear measurements. An error correcting code encodes an n-letter word x into an m-letter word y in such a way that x can be decoded correctly when any r letters of y are corrupted. We prove that most linear orthogonal transformations Q from R^n into R^m form efficient and robust robust error correcting codes over reals. The decoder (which corrects the corrupted components of y) is the metric projection onto the range of Q in the L_1 norm. An equivalent problem arises in signal processing: how to reconstruct a signal that belongs to a small class from few linear measurements? We prove that for most sets of Gaussian measurements, all signals of small support can be exactly reconstructed by the L_1 norm minimization. This is a substantial improvement of recent results of Donoho and of Candes and Tao. An equivalent problem in combinatorial geometry is the existence of a polytope with fixed number of facets and maximal number of lower-dimensional facets. We prove that most sections of the cube form such polytopes.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Lower Bounds on the Quantum Capacity and Highest Error Exponent of General Memoryless Channels

Tradeoffs between the information rate and fidelity of quantum error-correcting codes are discussed. Quantum channels to be considered are those subject to independent errors and modeled as tensor products of copies of a general completely positive linear map, where the dimension of the underlying Hilbert space is a prime number. On such a quantum channel, the highest fidelity of a quantum error-correcting code of length $n$ and rate R is proven to be lower bounded by 1 - \exp [-n E(R) + o(n)] for some function E(R). The E(R) is positive below some threshold R', which implies R' is a lower bound on the quantum capacity. The result of this work applies to general discrete memoryless channels, including channel models derived from a physical law of time evolution, or from master equations.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures. Ver.2: Comparisons with the previously known bounds and examples were added. Except for very noisy channels, this work's bound is, in general, better than those previously known. Ver.3: Introduction shortened. Minor change

Entanglement required in achieving entanglement-assisted channel capacities

Entanglement shared between the two ends of a quantum communication channel has been shown to be a useful resource in increasing both the quantum and classical capacities for these channels. The entanglement-assisted capacities were derived assuming an unlimited amount of shared entanglement per channel use. In this paper, bounds are derived on the minimum amount of entanglement required per use of a channel, in order to asymptotically achieve the capacity. This is achieved by introducing a class of entanglement-assisted quantum codes. Codes for classes of qubit channels are shown to achieve the quantum entanglement-assisted channel capacity when an amount of shared entanglement per channel given by, E = 1 - Q_E, is provided. It is also shown that for very noisy channels, as the capacities become small, the amount of required entanglement converges for the classical and quantum capacities.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, RevTex