Steane, Calderbank and Shor find a recipe for building quantum codes

Why it matters

They showed that good quantum codes come in large families that can suppress errors exponentially while needing only polynomially more computing resources.

Related

• Peter Shor shows quantum information can be protected from errors (Oct 1, 1995)
• Threshold theorem shows noisy quantum computers can still compute reliably (Oct 1996)

Sources (4)

• arXiv (Andrew Steane) Multiple Particle Interference and Quantum Error Correction
  Primary sourceJan 29, 1996

  “This implies exponential reduction of decoherence with only a polynomial increase in the computing resources required. Therefore quantum computation can be made free of errors in the presence of physically realistic levels of decoherence.”

• arXiv (Calderbank and Shor) Good Quantum Error-Correcting Codes Exist
  Primary source

  “Quantum error-correcting codes are shown to exist with asymptotic rate k/n = 1 - 2H(2t/n) where H(p) is the binary entropy function”

• Physical Review Letters Error Correcting Codes in Quantum Theory
  Primary sourceJul 29, 1996

  “A natural link is then revealed between basic quantum theory and the linear error correcting codes of classical information theory.”

• arXiv (Peter W. Shor) The Early Days of Quantum Computation
  Independent coverageAug 21, 2022

  “Andrew Steane discovered the quantum Hamming code and this construction at around the same time [29, 30], so these are now called CSS codes after their discoverers.”