Optimized Many-Hypercube Codes toward Lower Logical Error Rates and Earlier Realization

Abstract

Many-hypercube codes, concatenated ${[[n,n-2,2]]}$ quantum error-detecting codes ($n$ is even), have recently been proposed as high-rate quantum codes suitable for fault-tolerant quantum computing. While the original many-hypercube codes with ${n=6}$ can achieve remarkably high encoding rates (about 30% and 20% at concatenation levels 3 and 4, respectively), they have large code block sizes at high levels (216 and 1296 physical qubits per block at levels 3 and 4, respectively), making not only experimental realization difficult but also logical error rates per code block high. Toward earlier experimental realization and lower logical error rates, here we comprehensively investigate smaller many-hypercube codes with $[[6,4,2]]$ and/or $[[4,2,2]]$ codes, where, e.g., $D_{6,4,4}$ denotes the many-hypercube code using $[[6,4,2]]$ at level 1 and $[[4,2,2]]$ at levels 2 and 3. As a result, we found a counterintuitive fact that $D_{6,4,4}$ ($D_{6,6,4,4}$) can achieve lower logical error rates per code block than $D_{4,4,4}$ ($D_{4,4,4,4}$), despite its higher encoding rate and larger code block size. Focusing on level 3, we also developed efficient fault-tolerant encoders realizing about 60% overhead reduction while maintaining or even improving the performance, compared to the original design. Using them, we numerically confirmed that $D_{6,4,4}$ also achieves the best performance for logical controlled-NOT gates in a circuit-level noise model. These results are important for targeting a high-rate code toward early experimental realization of efficient fault-tolerant quantum computing.