A characterization of MDS codes that have an error correcting pair

Error-correcting pairs were introduced in 1988 by R. Pellikaan, and were found independently by R. K\"otter (1992), as a general algebraic method of decoding linear codes. These pairs exist for several classes of codes. However little or no study has been made for characterizing those codes. This article is an attempt to fill the vacuum left by the literature concerning this subject. Since every linear code is contained in an MDS code of the same minimum distance over some finite field extension we have focused our study on the class of MDS codes. Our main result states that an MDS code of minimum distance $2t+1$ has a $t$-ECP if and only if it is a generalized Reed-Solomon code. A second proof is given using recent results Mirandola and Z\'emor (2015) on the Schur product of codes

New Quantum Codes from Evaluation and Matrix-Product Codes

Stabilizer codes obtained via CSS code construction and Steane's enlargement of subfield-subcodes and matrix-product codes coming from generalized Reed-Muller, hyperbolic and affine variety codes are studied. Stabilizer codes with good quantum parameters are supplied, in particular, some binary codes of lengths 127 and 128 improve the parameters of the codes in http://www.codetables.de. Moreover, non-binary codes are presented either with parameters better than or equal to the quantum codes obtained from BCH codes by La Guardia or with lengths that can not be reached by them