Analytic asymptotic performance of topological codes

Austin G. Fowler

Published 2012-08-07Version 1

Topological quantum error correction codes are extremely practical, typically requiring only a 2-D lattice of qubits with tunable nearest neighbor interactions yet tolerating high physical error rates p. It is computationally expensive to simulate the performance of such codes at low p, yet this is a regime we wish to study as low physical error rates lead to low qubit overhead. We present a very general method of analytically estimating the low p performance of the most promising class of topological codes. Our method can handle arbitrary periodic quantum circuits implementing the error detection associated with this class of codes, and arbitrary Pauli error models for each type of quantum gate. Our analytic expressions take only seconds to obtain, versus hundreds of hours to perform equivalent low p simulations.