Quantum Codes, CFTs, and Defects

Abstract

We give a general construction relating Narain rational conformal field theories (RCFTs) and associated 3d Chern-Simons (CS) theories to quantum stabilizer codes. Starting from an abelian CS theory with a fusion group consisting of $n$ even-order factors, we map a boundary RCFT to an $n$-qubit quantum code. When the relevant 't Hooft anomalies vanish, we can orbifold our RCFTs and describe this gauging at the level of the code. Along the way, we give CFT interpretations of the code subspace and the Hilbert space of qubits while mapping error operations to CFT defect fields.