Adaptive Deformation of Color Code in Square Lattices with Defects

Abstract

Quantum error correction is a crucial technology for fault tolerant quantum computing. On superconducting platforms, hardware defects in large scale quantum processors can disrupt the regular lattice structure of topological codes and impair their error correction capabilities. Although defect adaptive methods for surface codes have been extensively studied, other topological codes such as color codes still lack a systematic framework for handling defects. To address this issue, we propose a universal superstabilizer scheme applicable to data qubit defects in arbitrary stabilizer codes. Based on this scheme, we develop concrete repair methods for isolated defects of both internal data qubits and ancilla qubits in color codes defined on square lattices. Furthermore, for ancilla qubit defects, we present two optimization schemes. One scheme reuses neighboring ancilla qubits, and the other employs iSWAP gates. Unlike conventional approaches that directly disable neighboring data qubits and thus cause resource waste, both of our schemes avoid such waste and consequently achieve a lower logical error rate.Integrating the above techniques, we construct a comprehensive defect adaptive architecture for color codes to handle various defect clusters. We also show that our scheme supports a full transversal Clifford gate set and lattice surgery operations. These results provide a systematic theoretical pathway for deploying robust and low overhead color codes on defective quantum hardware.