Power and Limitations of Linear Programming Decoder for Quantum LDPC Codes

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Gu, Shouzhen, Soleimanifar, Mehdi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Gu, Shouzhen
Soleimanifar, Mehdi
author_facet Gu, Shouzhen
Soleimanifar, Mehdi
contents Decoding quantum error-correcting codes is a key challenge in enabling fault-tolerant quantum computation. In the classical setting, linear programming (LP) decoders offer provable performance guarantees and can leverage fast practical optimization algorithms. Although LP decoders have been proposed for quantum codes, their performance and limitations remain relatively underexplored. In this work, we uncover a key limitation of LP decoding for quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes: certain constant-weight error patterns lead to ambiguous fractional solutions that cannot be resolved through independent rounding. To address this issue, we incorporate a post-processing technique known as ordered statistics decoding (OSD), which significantly enhances LP decoding performance in practice. Our results show that LP decoding, when augmented with OSD, can outperform belief propagation with the same post-processing for intermediate code sizes of up to hundreds of qubits. These findings suggest that LP-based decoders, equipped with effective post-processing, offer a promising approach for decoding near-term quantum LDPC codes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_04769
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Power and Limitations of Linear Programming Decoder for Quantum LDPC Codes
Gu, Shouzhen
Soleimanifar, Mehdi
Quantum Physics
Information Theory
Decoding quantum error-correcting codes is a key challenge in enabling fault-tolerant quantum computation. In the classical setting, linear programming (LP) decoders offer provable performance guarantees and can leverage fast practical optimization algorithms. Although LP decoders have been proposed for quantum codes, their performance and limitations remain relatively underexplored. In this work, we uncover a key limitation of LP decoding for quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes: certain constant-weight error patterns lead to ambiguous fractional solutions that cannot be resolved through independent rounding. To address this issue, we incorporate a post-processing technique known as ordered statistics decoding (OSD), which significantly enhances LP decoding performance in practice. Our results show that LP decoding, when augmented with OSD, can outperform belief propagation with the same post-processing for intermediate code sizes of up to hundreds of qubits. These findings suggest that LP-based decoders, equipped with effective post-processing, offer a promising approach for decoding near-term quantum LDPC codes.
title Power and Limitations of Linear Programming Decoder for Quantum LDPC Codes
topic Quantum Physics
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04769