An angular momentum approach to quantum insertion errors

Abstract: Quantum insertion errors are a class of errors that increase the number of qubits in a quantum system. Despite a wealth of research on classical insertion errors, there has been limited progress towards a general framework for correcting quantum insertion errors. We detail a quantum error correction protocol that can correct single insertion errors on a class of gapped permutation-invariant codes. We provide a simple two-stage syndrome extraction protocol that yields a two-bit syndrome, by measuring the total angular momentum and its projection along the $z$-axis (modulo the code gap) of the post-insertion state. We demonstrate that these measurements project the state onto a new codespace, and we detail a teleportation protocol to map the projected state back to a permutation-invariant code on the desired number of qubits.