In this work, we continue the search for quantum locally testable codes (qLTCs) of new parameters by presenting three constructions that can make new qLTCs from old. The first analyses the soundness of a quantum code under Hastings’ weight reduction construction for qLDPC codes to give a weight reduction procedure for qLTCs. Secondly, we describe a novel ‘soundness amplification’ procedure for qLTCs which can increase the soundness of any qLTC to a constant while preserving its distance and dimension, with an impact only felt on its locality. Finally, we apply the AEL distance amplification construction to the case of qLTCs for the first time which can turn a high-distance qLTC into one with linear distance, at the expense of other parameters. These constructions can be used on as-yet undiscovered qLTCs to obtain new parameters, but we also find a number of present applications to prove the existence of codes in previously unknown parameter regimes. In particular, applications of these operations to the hypersphere product code and the hemicubic code yield many previously unknown parameters. In addition, applications of all three results are described to an upcoming work.

We introduce a high-dimensional cubical complex, for any dimension$t \in \mathbb{N}$, and apply it to the design of quantum locally testable codes. Our complex is a natural generalization of the constructions by Panteleev and Kalachev and by Dinur et. al of a square complex (case$t=2$), which have been applied to the design of classical locally testable codes (LTC) and quantum low-density parity check codes (qLDPC) respectively. We turn the geometric (cubical) complex into a chain complex by relying on constant-sized local codes$h_{1}, \ldots,h_{t}$as gadgets. A recent result of Panteleev and Kalachev on existence of tuples of codes that are product expanding enables us to prove lower bounds on the cycle and co-cycle expansion of our chain complex. For$t=4$our construction gives a new family of “almost-good” quantum LTCs - with constant relative rate, inverse-polylogarithmic relative distance and soundness, and constant-size parity checks. Both the distance of the quantum code and its local testability are proven directly from the cycle and co-cycle expansion of our chain complex.

We prove $1 - {\left( {1 - {x^M}} \right)^{{2^M}}} > {\left( {1 - {{(1 - x)}^M}} \right)^{{2^M}}}$ for all x ∈ [0, 1] and all M > 1. This confirms a conjecture about polar code, made by Wu and Siegel in 2019, that ${W^{{0^m}{1^M}}}$ is more reliable than ${W^{{1^m}}}{0^M}$, where W is any binary erasure channel and M = 2m. The proof relies on a relaxation that m needs not be an integer, the solvability of a hexavariate ordinary differential equation, and a generalization of Green’s theorem that concerns function composition. The resulting inequality is optimal, M cannot be 2m− 1, witnessing how far polar code deviates from Reed–Muller code.

We construct a new explicit family of good quantum low-density parity-check codes which additionally have linear time decoders. Our codes are based on a three-term chain (2m× m)V →δ0 (2m)E →δ1 2F where V (X-checks) are the vertices, E (qubits) are the edges, and F (Z-checks) are the squares of a left-right Cayley complex, and where the maps are defined based on a pair of constant-size random codes CA,CB:2m→2Δ where Δ is the regularity of the underlying Cayley graphs.

Polar codes approach channel capacity provably and empirically and are thereby a constituent code of the 5G standard. Compared to low-density parity-check codes, however, the performance of short-length polar codes have rooms for improvement that could hinder its adoption by a wider class of applications. As part of the program that addresses the performance issue at short length, it is crucial to understand how fast binary memoryless symmetric channels polarize. A number, called scaling exponent, was defined to measure the speed of polarization and several estimates of the scaling exponent were given in literature. As of 2022, the tightest overestimate is 4.714 made by Mondelli, Hassani, and Urbanke in 2015. We lower the overestimate to 4.63. The idea behind this improvement is that, instead of describing the relation between a channel${W}$and its children${W}^ {\scriptscriptstyle {\boxed {\star}}}$and${W}^ {\bigcirc \!\!\! \star}$, we describe the relation between${W}$and its grandchildren$ {W}^{\scriptscriptstyle {\boxed {\star}} \, {\scriptscriptstyle {\boxed {\star}}} }$,${W}^{\scriptscriptstyle {\boxed {\star}}\, {{\bigcirc \!\! \star} }}$,${W}^{{\bigcirc \!\!\! \star}\,\,{\scriptscriptstyle {\boxed {\star}}} }$, and$ {W}^{{\bigcirc \!\!\! \star}\,{\bigcirc \!\!\! \star} }$. By doing so, the evolution of channels becomes “less Markovian” and hence more tighter inequalities can be obtained.

Polarization is an unprecedented coding technique in that it not only achieves channel capacity, but also does so at a faster speed of convergence than any other technique. This speed is measured by the "scaling exponent" and its importance is three-fold. Firstly, estimating the scaling exponent is challenging and demands a deeper understanding of the dynamics of communication channels. Secondly, scaling exponents serve as a benchmark for different variants of polar codes that helps us select the proper variant for real-life applications. Thirdly, the need to optimize for the scaling exponent sheds light on how to reinforce the design of polar code. In this paper, we generalize the binary erasure channel (BEC), the simplest communication channel and the protagonist of many polar code studies, to the "tetrahedral erasure channel" (TEC). We then invoke Mori-Tanaka’s 2 × 2 matrix over 𝔽_4 to construct polar codes over TEC. Our main contribution is showing that the dynamic of TECs converges to an almost-one-parameter family of channels, which then leads to an upper bound of 3.328 on the scaling exponent. This is the first non-binary matrix whose scaling exponent is upper-bounded. It also polarizes BEC faster than all known binary matrices up to 23 × 23 in size. Our result indicates that expanding the alphabet is a more effective and practical alternative to enlarging the matrix in order to achieve faster polarization.

We construct an explicit family of 3-XOR instances hard for $\Omega(n)$-levels of the Sum-of-Squares (SoS) semi-definite programming hierarchy. Not only is this the first explicit construction to beat brute force search (beyond low-order improvements (Tulsiani 2021, Pratt 2021)), combined with standard gap amplification techniques it also matches the (optimal) hardness of random instances up to imperfect completeness (Grigoriev TCS 2001, Schoenebeck FOCS 2008).Our result is based on a new form of small-set high dimensional expansion (SS-HDX) inspired by recent breakthroughs in locally testable and quantum LDPC codes. Adapting the recent framework of Dinur, Filmus, Harsha, and Tulsiani (ITCS 2021) for SoS lower bounds from the Ramanujan complex to this setting, we show any (bounded-degree) SS-HDX can be transformed into a highly unsatisfiable 3-XOR instance that cannot be refuted by $\Omega(n)$-levels of SoS. We then show Leverrier and Zémor’s (Arxiv 2022) recent qLDPC construction gives the desired explicit family of bounded-degree SS-HDX. Incidentally, this gives the strongest known form of bi-directional high dimensional expansion to date.A full version of this paper is accessible at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.11469.

A locally testable code (LTC) is an error correcting code with a property tester. The tester tests if a word is a codeword by reading constant random bits and rejects the word with probability proportional to the distance from the word to the closest codeword. An important open question until recently is whether there exist c3-LTCs which are LTCs with a constant rate, constant relative distance, and constant locality. In this work, we construct a new LTC family using 1-sided lossless expanders and balanced products.