Fault-tolerant error correction with the gauge color code

The constituent parts of a quantum computer are inherently vulnerable to errors. To this end we have developed quantum error-correcting codes to protect quantum information from noise. However, discovering codes that are capable of a universal set of computational operations with the minimal cost in quantum resources remains an important and ongoing challenge. One proposal of significant recent interest is the gauge color code. Notably, this code may offer a reduced resource cost over other well-studied fault-tolerant architectures using a new method, known as gauge fixing, for performing the non-Clifford logical operations that are essential for universal quantum computation. Here we examine the gauge color code when it is subject to noise. Specifically we make use of single-shot error correction to develop a simple decoding algorithm for the gauge color code, and we numerically analyse its performance. Remarkably, we find threshold error rates comparable to those of other leading proposals. Our results thus provide encouraging preliminary data of a comparative study between the gauge color code and other promising computational architectures.Comment: v1 - 5+4 pages, 11 figures, comments welcome; v2 - minor revisions, new supplemental including a discussion on correlated errors and details on threshold calculations; v3 - Author accepted manuscript. Accepted on 21/06/16. Deposited on 29/07/16. 9+5 pages, 17 figures, new version includes resource scaling analysis in below threshold regime, see eqn. (4) and methods sectio

On 2-Repeated Burst Codes

There are several kinds of burst errors for which error detecting and error correcting codes have been constructed. In this paper, we consider a new kind of burst error which will be termed as ‘2-repeated burst error of length b(fixed)’. Linear codes capable of detecting such errors have been studied. Further, codes capable of detecting and simultaneously correcting such errors have also been dealt with. The paper obtains lower and upper bounds on the number of parity-check digits required for such codes. An example of such a code has also been provided

Blockwise Repeated Burst Error Correcting Linear Codes

This paper presents a lower and an upper bound on the number of parity check digits required for a linear code that corrects a single sub-block containing errors which are in the form of 2-repeated bursts of length b or less. An illustration of such kind of codes has been provided. Further, the codes that correct m-repeated bursts of length b or less have also been studied

Numerical and analytical bounds on threshold error rates for hypergraph-product codes

We study analytically and numerically decoding properties of finite rate hypergraph-product quantum LDPC codes obtained from random (3,4)-regular Gallager codes, with a simple model of independent X and Z errors. Several non-trival lower and upper bounds for the decodable region are constructed analytically by analyzing the properties of the homological difference, equal minus the logarithm of the maximum-likelihood decoding probability for a given syndrome. Numerical results include an upper bound for the decodable region from specific heat calculations in associated Ising models, and a minimum weight decoding threshold of approximately 7%.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure