Single-shot preparation of hypergraph product codes via dimension jump

Abstract

Quantum error correction is a fundamental primitive of fault-tolerant quantum computing. But in order for error correction to proceed, one must first prepare the codespace of the underlying error-correcting code. A popular method for encoding quantum low-density parity-check codes is transversal initialization, where one begins in a product state and measures a set of stabilizer generators. In the presence of measurement errors however, this procedure is generically not fault-tolerant, and so one typically needs to repeat the measurements many times, resulting in a deep initialization circuit. We present a protocol that prepares the codespace of constant-rate hypergraph product codes in constant depth with $O(\sqrt{n})$ spatial overhead, and we show that the protocol is robust even in the presence of measurement errors. Our construction is inspired by dimension-jumping in topological codes and leverages two properties that arise from the homological product of codes. We provide some improvements to lower the spatial overhead and discuss applications to fault-tolerant architectures.