Conditions for the approximate correction of algebras

We study the approximate correctability of general algebras of observables, which represent hybrid quantum-classical information. This includes approximate quantum error correcting codes and subsystems codes. We show that the main result of arXiv:quant-ph/0605009 yields a natural generalization of the Knill-Laflamme conditions in the form of a dimension independent estimate of the optimal reconstruction error for a given encoding, measured using the trace-norm distance to a noiseless channel.Comment: Related to a talk given at TQC 2009 in Waterlo

Pauli Manipulation Detection codes and Applications to Quantum Communication over Adversarial Channels

We introduce and explicitly construct a quantum code we coin a "Pauli Manipulation Detection" code (or PMD), which detects every Pauli error with high probability. We apply them to construct the first near-optimal codes for two tasks in quantum communication over adversarial channels. Our main application is an approximate quantum code over qubits which can efficiently correct from a number of (worst-case) erasure errors approaching the quantum Singleton bound. Our construction is based on the composition of a PMD code with a stabilizer code which is list-decodable from erasures. Our second application is a quantum authentication code for "qubit-wise" channels, which does not require a secret key. Remarkably, this gives an example of a task in quantum communication which is provably impossible classically. Our construction is based on a combination of PMD codes, stabilizer codes, and classical non-malleable codes (Dziembowski et al., 2009), and achieves "minimal redundancy" (rate $1-o(1)$)

Quantum Error Correction in the Lowest Landau Level

We develop finite-dimensional versions of the quantum error-correcting codes proposed by Albert, Covey, and Preskill (ACP) for continuous-variable quantum computation on configuration spaces with nonabelian symmetry groups. Our codes can be realized by a charged particle in a Landau level on a spherical geometry -- in contrast to the planar Landau level realization of the qudit codes of Gottesman, Kitaev, and Preskill (GKP) -- or more generally by spin coherent states. Our quantum error-correction scheme is inherently approximate, and the encoded states may be easier to prepare than those of GKP or ACP.Comment: 27 + 29 pages, comments welcome; v2: close to published versio