Sharp Error-Rate Transitions in Quantum QC-LDPC Codes under Joint BP Decoding

Abstract: In this study, we report that quantum quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check codes decoded via joint belief propagation (BP) exhibit steep error-rate curves, despite the presence of error floors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first observation of such threshold-like behavior for quantum codes with non-vanishing coding rate, excluding those decoded with non-binary BP decoders. Moreover, we find that dominant error events contributing to the error floor typically involve only a small number of bits. These findings suggest that the error floor is caused by trapping sets -- specific subgraph structures in the Tanner graph -- and indicate that identifying and avoiding such structures may lead to further reduction of the error floor.