IQC Student Seminar featuring Sarah Meng Li

Abstract: In this work, we present a generic approach to transform CSS codes by building upon their equivalence to phase-free ZX diagrams. Using the ZX calculus, we demonstrate diagrammatic transformations between encoding maps associated with different codes. As a motivating example, we give explicit transformations between the Steane code and the quantum Reed-Muller code, since by switching between these two codes, one can obtain a fault-tolerant universal gate set. To this end, we propose a bidirectional rewrite rule to find a (not necessarily transversal) physical implementation for any logical ZX diagram in any CSS code.

Then we focus on two code transformation techniques: code morphing, a procedure that transforms a code while retaining its fault-tolerant gates, and gauge fixing, where complimentary codes (such as the Steane and quantum Reed-Muller codes) can be obtained from a common subsystem code. We provide explicit graphical derivations for these techniques and show how ZX and graphical encoder maps relate several equivalent perspectives on these code transforming operations.