Emergent symmetries and their application to logical gates in quantum LDPC codes

Abstract

In this talk, I’ll discuss the deep connection between emergent k-form symmetries and transversal logical gates in quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. I’ll then present a parallel fault-tolerant quantum computing scheme for families of homological quantum LDPC codes defined on 3-manifolds with constant or almost-constant encoding rate using the underlying higher symmetries in our recent work. We derive a generic formula for a transversal T gate on color codes defined on general 3-manifolds, which acts as collective non-Clifford logical CCZ gates on any triplet of logical qubits with their logical-X membranes having a Z2 triple intersection at a single point. The triple intersection number is a topological invariant, which also arises in the path integral of the emergent higher symmetry operator in a topological quantum field theory (TQFT): the (Z2) 3 gauge theory. Moreover, the transversal S gate of the color code corresponds to a higher-form symmetry supported on a codimension-1 submanifold, giving rise to exponentially many addressable and parallelizable logical CZ gates. Both symmetries are related to gauged SPT defects in the (Z2) 3 gauge theory. We have then developed a generic formalism to compute the triple intersection invariants for general 3- manifolds. We further develop three types of LDPC codes supporting such logical gates with constant or almost-constant encoding rate and logarithmic distance. Finally, I’ll point out a connection between the gauged SPT defects in the 6D color code and a recently discovered non-Abelian self-correcting quantum memory in 5D. Reference: arXiv:2310.16982, arXiv:2208.07367, arXiv:2405.11719.