Overcoming the Zero-Rate Hashing Bound with Holographic Quantum Error Correction

Abstract: A crucial insight for practical quantum error correction is that different types of errors, such as single-qubit Pauli operators, typically occur with different probabilities. Finding an optimal quantum code under such biased noise is a challenging problem, related to finding the (generally unknown) maximum capacity of the corresponding noisy channel. A benchmark for this capacity is given by the hashing bound, describing the performance of random stabilizer codes, which leads to the challenge of finding codes that reach or exceed this bound while also being efficiently decodable. In this work, we show that asymptotically zero-rate holographic codes, built from hyperbolic tensor networks that model holographic bulk/boundary dualities, fulfill both conditions. Of the five holographic code models considered, all are found to reach the hashing bound in some bias regime and one, the holographic surface-code fragment, appears to even exceed the capacity of previously known codes in the 2-Pauli-dominated noise regime. In addition, we consider Clifford deformations that allow all considered codes to reach the hashing bound for 1-Pauli-dominated noise as well. Our results thus establish that holographic codes, which were previously shown to possess efficient tensor-network decoders, also exhibit competitive thresholds under biased noise.