Michael Gullans

Code switching is a powerful technique in quantum error correction that allows one to leverage the complementary strengths of different codes to achieve fault-tolerant universal quantum computation. However, existing code-switching protocols which encapsulate recent generalized lattice surgery approaches often either require many rounds of measurements to ensure fault-tolerance or suffer from low code rates. We present a single-shot, universal protocol that uses code-switching between high-rate quantum codes to perform fault-tolerant quantum computation. To our best knowledge, our work contains the first universal fault-tolerant quantum computation protocol that achieves what we term single-shot universality that is characterized by (i) single-shot error correction, (ii) single-shot state preparation, as well as (iii) logical gates and logical measurements with constant depth circuits. We achieve this by showing how to perform single-shot code switching between high-rate homological product codes by developing a generalization of Bombin's dimensional jump for color codes and Hillmann et al.'s single-shot lattice surgery for higher-dimensional topological codes. We introduce a vastly simpler recipe to construct 3D homological product codes with transversal CCZ gates that grants immense flexibility in the choice of expander graphs and local codes, allowing us to expand the search space for codes with good parameters and interesting logical gates. Our work opens an alternative path towards universal fault-tolerant quantum computation with low space-time overhead by circumventing the need for magic state distillation.

We develop classical simulation algorithms for adaptive quantum circuits that produce states with low levels of "magic" (i.e., non-stabilizerness). These algorithms are particularly well-suited to circuits with high rates of Pauli measurements, such as those encountered in quantum error correction and monitored quantum circuits. The measurements serve to limit the buildup of magic induced by non-Clifford operations arising from generic noise processes or unitary gates, respectively. Our algorithms also allow a systematic truncation procedure to achieve approximate simulation. To benchmark our approach, we study the dynamics of all-to-all monitored quantum circuits with a sub-extensive rate of T-gates per unit of circuit depth, where we can simulate previously inaccessible system sizes and depths. We characterize measurement-induced phase transitions in the output wavefunction, including in the entanglement, purification, and magic. We outline the utility of our algorithms to simulate dynamics with low magic and high entanglement, complementary to the leading matrix-product state approaches.

It has been known for almost 30 years that quantum circuits with interspersed depolarizing noise converge to the uniform distribution at 𝜔(log n) depth, where n is the number of qubits, making them classically simulable. We show that under the realistic constraint of geometric locality, this bound is loose: these circuits become classically simulable at even shallower depths. While prior work in this regime considered quantum circuits with random gates/inputs or circuits with high levels of noise, we consider sampling from any quantum circuit and noise of any constant strength. First, we prove that the output distributions of noisy geometrically local quantum circuits can be approximately sampled from in quasipolynomial time, when their depth exceeds a fixed Θ(log n) critical threshold which depends on the noise strength. This scaling in n matches classical simulability results that were previously only known for noisy random quantum circuits (Aharonov et al., STOC 2023). We further conjecture that our bound is still loose and that a Θ(1)-depth threshold suffices for simulability due to a percolation effect. To support this, we provide analytical evidence together with a candidate efficient algorithm. Our results rely on new information-theoretic properties of the output states of noisy shallow quantum circuits, which may be of broad interest. On a fundamental level, we demonstrate that unitary quantum processes in constant dimensions are more fragile to noise than previously understood.

Fault-tolerant logical entangling gates are essential for scalable quantum computing, but are limited by the error rates and overheads of physical two-qubit gates and measurements. To address this limitation we introduce phantom codes---quantum error-correcting codes that realize entangling gates between all logical qubits in a codeblock purely through relabelling of physical qubits during compilation, yielding perfect fidelity with no spatial or temporal overhead. We present a systematic study of such codes. First, we identify phantom codes using complementary numerical and analytical approaches. We exhaustively enumerate all 2.71 x 10^{10} inequivalent CSS codes up to n=14 and identify additional instances up to n=21 via SAT-based methods. We then construct higher-distance phantom-code families using quantum Reed--Muller codes and the binarization of qudit codes. Across all identified codes, we characterize other supported fault-tolerant logical Clifford and non-Clifford operations. Second, through end-to-end noisy simulations with state preparation, full QEC cycles, and realistic physical error rates, we demonstrate scalable advantages of phantom codes over the surface code across multiple tasks. We observe one–to–two–order-of-magnitude reduction in logical infidelity at comparable qubit overhead for GHZ-state preparation and Trotterized many-body simulation tasks, given a modest preselection acceptance rate. Our work establishes phantom codes as a viable architectural route to fault-tolerant quantum computation with scalable benefits for workloads with dense local entangling structure, and introduces general tools for systematically exploring the broader landscape of quantum error-correcting codes.

Geometric locality is an important theoretical and practical factor for quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes which affects code performance and ease of physical realization. For device architectures restricted to 2D local gates, naively implementing the high-rate codes suitable for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing incurs prohibitive overhead. In this work, we present an error correction protocol built on a bilayer architecture that aims to reduce operational overheads when restricted to 2D local gates by measuring some generators less frequently than others. We investigate the family of bivariate bicycle qLDPC codes and show that they are well suited for a parallel syndrome measurement scheme using fast routing with local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Through circuit-level simulations, we find that in some parameter regimes bivariate bicycle codes implemented with this protocol have logical error rates comparable to the surface code while using fewer physical qubits.

Abstract Random quantum circuits have played a central role in establishing the computational advantages of near-term quantum computers over their conventional counterparts. Here, we use ensembles of low-depth random circuits with local connectivity in D spatial dimensions to generate quantum error-correcting codes. For random stabilizer codes and the erasure channel, we find strong evidence that a depth O(logN) random circuit is necessary and sufficient to converge (with high probability) to zero failure probability for any finite amount below the channel capacity for any D. Previous results on random circuits have only shown that O(N^1/D) depth suffices or that O(log^3 N) depth suffices for all-to-all connectivity. We then study the critical behavior of the erasure threshold in the so-called moderate deviation limit, where both the failure probability and the distance to the channel capacity converge to zero with N. We find that the requisite depth scales like O(log N) only for dimensions D=2, and that random circuits require O(N^1/2) depth for D=1. Finally, we introduce an "expurgation" algorithm that uses quantum measurements to remove logical operators that cause the code to fail by turning them into either additional stabilizers or into gauge operators in a subsystem code. With such targeted measurements, we can achieve sub-logarithmic depth in D=2 spatial dimensions below capacity without increasing the maximum weight of the check operators. We find that for any rate beneath the capacity, high-performing codes with thousands of logical qubits are achievable with depth 4-8 expurgated random circuits in D=2 dimensions. These results indicate that finite-rate quantum codes are practically relevant for near-term devices and may significantly reduce the resource requirements to achieve fault tolerance for near-term applications.

Routing is the task of permuting qubits in such a way that quantum operations can be parallelized maximally, given constraints on the hardware geometry. When simulating fermions in the Jordan-Wigner encoding with qubits, a one-dimensional nearest-neighbor-connected geometry is effectively imposed on the system, independently of the underlying hardware, which means that naively, an O(N) depth routing overhead is incurred. Recently, Maskara et al. [arXiv:2509.08898] demonstrated that this routing overhead can be reduced to O(\log N) by decomposing general fermion routing into O(\log N) interleave permutations of depth O(1), using \Theta(N) ancillary qubits and employing measurements and feedforward. Here, we exhibit an alternative construction that achieves the same asymptotic performance. We also generalize the result in two ways. Firstly, we show that fermion routing can be performed in depth O(\log^2 N) \emph{without} ancillas, measurements, or feedforward. Secondly, we construct efficient mappings with O(\log^2 N) depth between all product-preserving ternary tree fermionic encodings, thereby showing that fermion routing in any such encoding can be done efficiently. While these results assume all-to-all connectivity, they also imply upper bounds for fermion routing in devices with limited connectivity by multiplying the fermion routing depth by the worst-case qubit routing depth.

The homological product is a general-purpose recipe that forges new quantum codes from arbitrary classical or quantum input codes, often providing enhanced error-correcting properties. When the input codes are classical linear codes, it is also known as the hypergraph product. We investigate structured homological product codes that admit logical operations arising from permutation symmetries in their input codes. We present a broad theoretical framework that characterizes the logical operations resulting from these underlying automorphisms. In general, these logical operations can be performed by a combination of physical qubit permutations and a subsystem circuit. In special cases related to symmetries of the input Tanner graphs, logical operations can be performed solely through qubit permutations. We further demonstrate that these "automorphism gadgets" can possess inherent fault-tolerant properties such as effective distance preservation, assuming physical permutations are free. Finally, we survey the literature of classical linear codes with rich automorphism structures and show how various classical code families fit into our framework. Complementary to other fault-tolerant gadgets for homological product codes, our results further advance the search for practical fault tolerance beyond topological codes in platforms capable of long-range connectivity.