Rate-(n-2)/n unrestricted and CSS-type quantum convolutional codes with up to
4096 states and minimum distances up to 10 are constructed as stabilizer codes
from classical self-orthogonal rate-1/n F_4-linear and binary linear
convolutional codes, respectively. These codes generally have higher rate and
less decoding complexity than comparable quantum block codes or previous
quantum convolutional codes. Rate-(n-2)/n block stabilizer codes with the same
rate and error-correction capability and essentially the same decoding
algorithms are derived from these convolutional codes via tail-biting.Comment: 30 pages. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Minor
revisions after first round of review