Generalized surface codes and packing of logical qubits

Abstract: We consider a notion of relative homology (and cohomology) for surfaces with two types of boundaries. Using this tool, we study a generalization of Kitaev's code based on surfaces with mixed boundaries. This construction includes both Bravyi and Kitaev's and Freedman and Meyer's extension of Kitaev's toric code. We argue that our generalization offers a denser storage of quantum information. In a planar architecture, we obtain a three-fold overhead reduction over the standard architecture consisting of a punctured square lattice.