Quasi-twisted codes are used here as the classical ingredients in the so-called Construction X for quantum error-control codes. The construction utilizes nearly self-orthogonal codes to design quantum stabilizer codes. We expand the choices of the inner product to also cover the symplectic and trace-symplectic inner products, in addition to the original Hermitian one. A refined lower bound on the minimum distance of the resulting quantum codes is established and illustrated. We report numerous record breaking quantum codes from our randomized search for inclusion in the updated online database.

Abstract We consider the minimum weight of codewords in a quasi-cyclic code and characterize the estimate in its most general setup using their concatenated structure. The new bound we derive generalizes the Jensen and Güneri–Özbudak bounds and it holds for the more general class of multilevel concatenated codes.

Spectral bounds form a powerful tool to estimate the minimum distances of quasi-cyclic codes. They generalize the defining set bounds of cyclic codes to those of quasi-cyclic codes. Based on the eigenvalues of quasi-cyclic codes and the corresponding eigenspaces, we provide an improved spectral bound for quasi-cyclic codes. Numerical results verify that the improved bound outperforms the Jensen bound in almost all cases. Based on the improved bound, we propose a general construction of quasi-cyclic codes with excellent designed minimum distances. For the quasi-cyclic codes produced by this general construction, the improved spectral bound is always sharper than the Jensen bound.

Spectral bounds on the minimum distance of quasi-twisted codes over finite fields are proposed, based on eigenvalues of polynomial matrices and the corresponding eigenspaces. They generalize the Semenov-Trifonov and Zeh-Ling bounds in a way similar to how the Roos and shift bounds extend the BCH and HT bounds for cyclic codes. The eigencodes of a quasi-twisted code in the spectral theory and the outer codes in its concatenated structure are related. A comparison based on this relation verifies that the Jensen bound always outperforms the spectral bound under special conditions, which yields a similar relation between the Lally and the spectral bounds. The performances of the Lally, Jensen and spectral bounds are presented in comparison with each other.

We apply quantum Construction X on quasi-cyclic codes with large Hermitian hulls over F4and F9to derive good qubit and qutrit stabilizer codes, respectively. In several occasions we obtain quantum codes with stricly improved parameters than the current record. In numerous other occasions we obtain quantum codes with best-known performance. For the qutrit ones we supply a systematic construction to fill some gaps in the literature.

New lower bounds on the minimum distance of quasi-twisted codes over finite fields are proposed. They are based on spectral analysis and eigenvalues of polynomial matrices. They generalize the Semenov-Trifonov and Zeh-Ling bounds in a manner similar to how the Roos and shift bounds extend the BCH and HT bounds for cyclic codes.

We study linear complementary pairs (LCP) of codes (C, D), where both codes belong to the same algebraic code family. We especially investigate constacyclic and quasicyclic LCP of codes. We obtain characterizations for LCP of constacyclic codes and LCP of quasi-cyclic codes. Our result for the constacyclic complementary pairs extends the characterization of linear complementary dual (LCD) cyclic codes given by Yang and Massey. We observe that when C and D are complementary and constacyclic, the codes C and D⊥are equivalent to each other. Hence, the security parameter min(d(C), d(D⊥)) for LCP of codes is simply determined by one of the codes in this case. The same holds for a special class of quasi-cyclic codes, namely 2D cyclic codes, but not in general for all quasi-cyclic codes, since we have examples of LCP of double circulant codes not satisfying this conclusion for the security parameter. We present examples of binary LCP of quasi-cyclic codes and obtain several codes with better parameters than known binary LCD codes. Finally, a linear programming bound is obtained for binary LCP of codes and a table of values from this bound is presented in the case d(C) = d(D⊥). This extends the linear programming bound for LCD codes.

We completely characterize possible indices of quasi-cyclic subcodes in a cyclic code for a very broad class of cyclic codes. We present enumeration results for quasi-cyclic subcodes of a fixed index and show that the problem of enumeration is equivalent to enumeration of certain vector subspaces in finite fields. In particular, we present enumeration results for quasi-cyclic subcodes of the simplex code and duals of certain Bose--Chaudhuri--Hocquenqhem codes. Our results are based on the trace representation of cyclic codes.

We introduce multidimensional analogues of quasi-cyclic (QC) codes and study their algebraic structure. We demonstrate a concatenated structure for multidimensional QC codes and use this to prove that this class of codes is asymptotically good. We also relate the new family of codes to convolutional codes. It is known that the minimum distance of QC codes provides a natural lower bound on the free distance of convolutional codes. We show that the same relation also holds between certain rank one 2-D convolutional codes and the related multidimensional QC codes. We provide examples, which show that our bound is sharp in some cases. We also present some optimal 2-D QC codes. Along the way, we provide a condition on the encoders of rank one convolutional codes, which are equivalent to noncatastrophicity for 1-D convolutional codes. In the nD case (n>1), our condition is sufficient for the noncatastrophicity of the encoder.