Quantum stabilizer codes often struggle with syndrome errors due to measurement imperfections. Typically, multiple rounds of syndrome extraction are employed to ensure reliable error information. In this paper, we consider phenomenological decoding problems, where data qubit errors may occur between extractions, and each measurement can be faulty. We introduce generalized quantum data-syndrome codes along with a generalized check matrix that integrates both quaternary and binary alphabets to represent diverse error sources. This results in a Tanner graph with mixed variable nodes, enabling the design of belief propagation (BP) decoding algorithms that effectively handle phenomenological errors. Importantly, our BP decoders are applicable to general sparse quantum codes. Through simulations, we achieve an error threshold of more than 3% for quantum memory protected by rotated toric codes, using solely BP without post-processing. Our results indicate that d rounds of syndrome extraction are sufficient for a toric code of distance d. We observe that at high error rates, fewer rounds of syndrome extraction tend to perform better, while more rounds improve performance at lower error rates. Additionally, we propose a method to construct effective redundant stabilizer checks for single-shot error correction. Our simulations show that BP decoding remains highly effective even with a high syndrome error rate.

Quantum stabilizer codes often face the challenge of syndrome errors due to error-prone measurements and multiple rounds of syndrome extraction are typically employed. In this paper, we consider phenomenological decoding problems, where data qubit errors may occur between two syndrome extractions, and each syndrome measurement can be faulty. To handle these diverse error sources, we define a generalized check matrix over mixed quaternary and binary alphabets to characterize their error syndromes. This generalized check matrix leads to the creation of a Tanner graph comprising quaternary and binary variable nodes, which facilitates the development of belief propagation (BP) decoding algorithms to tackle phenomenological errors. Additionally, our BP decoders are applicable to general sparse quantum codes.

Topological quantum codes are favored because they allow suitable qubit layouts for practical implementation. An N-qubit topological code can be decoded by minimum-weight perfect matching (MWPM) with complexity O(poly(N)). Recently it is shown that various quantum codes, including topological codes, can be decoded by an adapted belief propagation with memory effects (denoted MBP) with complexity almost linear in N. In this paper, we show that various two-dimensional topological codes, CSS or non-CSS, regardless of the layout, can be decoded by MBP, including color codes and a family of twisted XZZX codes. We will comprehensively compare these codes in terms of code efficiency and decoding performance, assuming perfect error syndromes.

Quantum error correction is necessary to protect logical quantum states and operations. However, no meaningful data protection can be made when the syndrome extraction is erroneous due to faulty measurement gates. Quantum data-syndrome (DS) codes are designed to protect the data qubits and syndrome bits concurrently. In this paper, we propose an efficient decoding algorithm for quantum DS codes with sparse check matrices. Based on a refined belief propagation (BP) decoding for stabilizer codes, we propose a DS-BP algorithm to handle the quaternary quantum data errors and binary syndrome bit errors. Moreover, a sparse quantum code may inherently be able to handle minor syndrome errors so that fewer redundant syndrome measurements are necessary. We demonstrate this with simulations on a quantum hypergraph-product code.

Quantum error-correcting codes are used to protect quantum information from decoherence. A raw state is mapped, by an encoding circuit, to a codeword so that the most likely quantum errors from a noisy quantum channel can be removed after a decoding process.A good encoding circuit should have some desired features, such as low depth, few gates, and so on. In this paper, we show how to practically implement an encoding circuit of gate complexity O(n(n - k + c)/ log n) for an [[n, k; c]] quantum stabilizer code with the help of c pairs of maximally-entangled states. For the special case of an [[n, k]] stabilizer code with c = 0, the encoding complexity is O(n(n-k)/ log n), which is previously known to be O(n2/ log n). For c > 0, this suggests that the benefits from shared entanglement come at an additional cost of encoding complexity.Finally we discuss decoding of entanglement-assisted quantum stabilizer codes and extend previously known computational hardness results on decoding quantum stabilizer codes.

In this paper, we investigate the encoding complexity of binary quantum stabilizer codes. When doing the encoding through a “standard generator matrix”, a tight upper bound of the encoding complexity is derived in this paper to indicate that the encoding complexity decreases quadratically as the number r1of primary generators of the stabilizer group decreases. A class of equivalent transformations on stabilizer codes is explored to reduce the number r1of primary generators. The minimum possible r1is determined for several classes of optimal stabilizer codes of distance two or three and for some codes of length n ≤ 12. It appears that a code with large minimum distance will have large r1, reflecting high encoding complexity.