Quantum Error Correcting Codes and Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation over Nice Rings

Abstract

Quantum error correcting codes play an essential role in protecting quantum information from the noise and the decoherence. Most quantum codes have been constructed based on the Pauli basis indexed by a finite field. With a newly introduced algebraic class called a nice ring, it is possible to construct the quantum codes such that their alphabet sizes are not restricted to powers of a prime.

Subsystem codes are quantum error correcting schemes unifying stabilizer codes, decoherence free subspaces and noiseless subsystems. We show a generalization of subsystem codes over nice rings. Furthermore, we prove that free subsystem codes over a finite chain ring cannot outperform those over a finite field. We also generalize entanglement-assisted quantum error correcting codes to nice rings. With the help of the entanglement, any classical code can be used to derive the corresponding quantum codes, even if such codes are not self-orthogonal. We prove that an R-module with antisymmetric bicharacter can be decomposed as an orthogonal direct sum of hyperbolic pairs using symplectic geometry over rings. So, we can find hyperbolic pairs and commuting generators generating the check matrix of the entanglement-assisted quantum code.

Fault-tolerant quantum computation has been also studied over a finite field. Transversal operations are the simplest way to implement fault-tolerant quantum gates. We derive transversal Clifford operations for CSS codes over nice rings, including Fourier transforms, SUM gates, and phase gates. Since transversal operations alone cannot provide a computationally universal set of gates, we add fault-tolerant implementations of doubly-controlled Z gates for triorthogonal stabilizer codes over nice rings.

Finally, we investigate optimal key exchange protocols for unconditionally secure key distribution schemes. We prove how many rounds are needed for the key exchange between any pair of the group on star networks, linear-chain networks, and general networks.