Quantum stabilizer codes and beyond

The importance of quantum error correction in paving the way to build a practical quantum computer is no longer in doubt. This dissertation makes a threefold contribution to the mathematical theory of quantum error-correcting codes. Firstly, it extends the framework of an important class of quantum codes -- nonbinary stabilizer codes. It clarifies the connections of stabilizer codes to classical codes over quadratic extension fields, provides many new constructions of quantum codes, and develops further the theory of optimal quantum codes and punctured quantum codes. Secondly, it contributes to the theory of operator quantum error correcting codes also called as subsystem codes. These codes are expected to have efficient error recovery schemes than stabilizer codes. This dissertation develops a framework for study and analysis of subsystem codes using character theoretic methods. In particular, this work establishes a close link between subsystem codes and classical codes showing that the subsystem codes can be constructed from arbitrary classical codes. Thirdly, it seeks to exploit the knowledge of noise to design efficient quantum codes and considers more realistic channels than the commonly studied depolarizing channel. It gives systematic constructions of asymmetric quantum stabilizer codes that exploit the asymmetry of errors in certain quantum channels.Comment: Ph.D. Dissertation, Texas A&M University, 200

Quantum error control codes

It is conjectured that quantum computers are able to solve certain problems more quickly than any deterministic or probabilistic computer. For instance, Shor's algorithm is able to factor large integers in polynomial time on a quantum computer. A quantum computer exploits the rules of quantum mechanics to speed up computations. However, it is a formidable task to build a quantum computer, since the quantum mechanical systems storing the information unavoidably interact with their environment. Therefore, one has to mitigate the resulting noise and decoherence effects to avoid computational errors. In this dissertation, I study various aspects of quantum error control codes - the key component of fault-tolerant quantum information processing. I present the fundamental theory and necessary background of quantum codes and construct many families of quantum block and convolutional codes over finite fields, in addition to families of subsystem codes. This dissertation is organized into three parts: Quantum Block Codes. After introducing the theory of quantum block codes, I establish conditions when BCH codes are self-orthogonal (or dual-containing) with respect to Euclidean and Hermitian inner products. In particular, I derive two families of nonbinary quantum BCH codes using the stabilizer formalism. I study duadic codes and establish the existence of families of degenerate quantum codes, as well as families of quantum codes derived from projective geometries. Subsystem Codes. Subsystem codes form a new class of quantum codes in which the underlying classical codes do not need to be self-orthogonal. I give an introduction to subsystem codes and present several methods for subsystem code constructions. I derive families of subsystem codes from classical BCH and RS codes and establish a family of optimal MDS subsystem codes. I establish propagation rules of subsystem codes and construct tables of upper and lower bounds on subsystem code parameters. Quantum Convolutional Codes. Quantum convolutional codes are particularly well-suited for communication applications. I develop the theory of quantum convolutional codes and give families of quantum convolutional codes based on RS codes. Furthermore, I establish a bound on the code parameters of quantum convolutional codes - the generalized Singleton bound. I develop a general framework for deriving convolutional codes from block codes and use it to derive families of non-catastrophic quantum convolutional codes from BCH codes. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of some open problems

On Subsystem Codes Beating the Hamming or Singleton Bound

Subsystem codes are a generalization of noiseless subsystems, decoherence free subspaces, and quantum error-correcting codes. We prove a Singleton bound for GF(q)-linear subsystem codes. It follows that no subsystem code over a prime field can beat the Singleton bound. On the other hand, we show the remarkable fact that there exist impure subsystem codes beating the Hamming bound. A number of open problems concern the comparison in performance of stabilizer and subsystem codes. One of the open problems suggested by Poulin's work asks whether a subsystem code can use fewer syndrome measurements than an optimal MDS stabilizer code while encoding the same number of qudits and having the same distance. We prove that linear subsystem codes cannot offer such an improvement under complete decoding.Comment: 18 pages more densely packed than classically possibl

Automated searching for quantum subsystem codes

Quantum error correction allows for faulty quantum systems to behave in an effectively error free manner. One important class of techniques for quantum error correction is the class of quantum subsystem codes, which are relevant both to active quantum error correcting schemes as well as to the design of self-correcting quantum memories. Previous approaches for investigating these codes have focused on applying theoretical analysis to look for interesting codes and to investigate their properties. In this paper we present an alternative approach that uses computational analysis to accomplish the same goals. Specifically, we present an algorithm that computes the optimal quantum subsystem code that can be implemented given an arbitrary set of measurement operators that are tensor products of Pauli operators. We then demonstrate the utility of this algorithm by performing a systematic investigation of the quantum subsystem codes that exist in the setting where the interactions are limited to 2-body interactions between neighbors on lattices derived from the convex uniform tilings of the plane.Comment: 38 pages, 15 figure, 10 tables. The algorithm described in this paper is available as both library and a command line program (including full source code) that can be downloaded from http://github.com/gcross/CodeQuest/downloads. The source code used to apply the algorithm to scan the lattices is available upon request. Please feel free to contact the authors with question

A statistical mechanical interpretation of instantaneous codes

In this paper we develop a statistical mechanical interpretation of the noiseless source coding scheme based on an absolutely optimal instantaneous code. The notions in statistical mechanics such as statistical mechanical entropy, temperature, and thermal equilibrium are translated into the context of noiseless source coding. Especially, it is discovered that the temperature 1 corresponds to the average codeword length of an instantaneous code in this statistical mechanical interpretation of noiseless source coding scheme. This correspondence is also verified by the investigation using box-counting dimension. Using the notion of temperature and statistical mechanical arguments, some information-theoretic relations can be derived in the manner which appeals to intuition.Comment: 5 pages, Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp.1906 - 1910, Nice, France, June 24 - 29, 200

Subsystem Pseudo-pure States

A critical step in experimental quantum information processing (QIP) is to implement control of quantum systems protected against decoherence via informational encodings, such as quantum error correcting codes, noiseless subsystems and decoherence free subspaces. These encodings lead to the promise of fault tolerant QIP, but they come at the expense of resource overheads. Part of the challenge in studying control over multiple logical qubits, is that QIP test-beds have not had sufficient resources to analyze encodings beyond the simplest ones. The most relevant resources are the number of available qubits and the cost to initialize and control them. Here we demonstrate an encoding of logical information that permits the control over multiple logical qubits without full initialization, an issue that is particularly challenging in liquid state NMR. The method of subsystem pseudo-pure state will allow the study of decoherence control schemes on up to 6 logical qubits using liquid state NMR implementations.Comment: 9 pages, 1 Figur