Continuous-Variable Quantum MacWilliams Identities

Abstract: We derive bounds on general quantum error correcting codes against the displacement noise channel. The bounds limit the distances attainable by codes and also apply in an approximate setting. Our main result is a quantum analogue of the classical Cohn-Elkies bound on sphere packing densities attainable in Euclidean space. We further derive a quantum version of Levenshtein's sphere packing bound and argue that Gottesman--Kitaev--Preskill (GKP) codes based on the $E_8$ and Leech lattices achieve optimal distances. The main technical tool is a continuous-variable version of the quantum MacWilliams identities, which we introduce. The identities relate a pair of weight distributions which can be obtained for any two trace-class operators. General properties of these weight distributions are discussed, along with several examples.