Coherent error threshold for quantum LDPC codes

Abstract:A key appeal of quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes is their ability to suppress stochastic Pauli noise below nonzero thresholds. Coherent errors are fundamentally different: they produce superpositions of error patterns whose amplitudes can interfere even after syndrome measurement. Rigorous understanding of coherent errors remains limited. Here we show that general qLDPC codes admit a nonzero code capacity threshold against local coherent noise and more generally local channel noise. For any family of qLDPC codes with distance $d=\Omega(\log n)$, we show that there is a constant noise strength below which the logical recovery error in diamond distance decays exponentially with the code distance. The result is established for optimal recovery as well as the minimum-weight decoder. The key technical ingredient is what we call a \emph{cluster resummation}: rather than bounding superposed error configurations one by one, we isolate a large connected error cluster in the channel expansion and exactly resum all errors disconnected from it before taking norms. Standard cluster counting then yields exponential suppression. This work resolves a longstanding challenge in fault tolerance theory, providing general robustness guarantees for qLDPC codes against coherent noise and laying a rigorous foundation for future studies of fault-tolerant quantum technologies.

arXiv:2609.20537 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2609.20537v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.20537 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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