Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Gauge theories and quantum error-correcting codes share the same underlying structure: both use constraints to identify a specific subspace of the full Hilbert space. In quantum error correction, these constraints are known as stabilizers, while in gauge theories they correspond to Gauss law. In this work, we consider a family of discrete Abelian lattice gauge theories described by a $\mathbb{Z}_{N}$ gauge group with $N$ an arbitrary power of two. In this setting, we find a set of stabilizers for the gauge-invariant subspace which is an alternative to the Gauss operators, and we call them binary Gauss stabilizers. We use this alternative stabilizer group to build practical error-correcting codes exploiting the gauge symmetries of the system without the addition of extra qubits. The applications of our finding are not limited to error correction though. We also provide a new strategy of gauge fixing to remove the redundancies based on our alternative stabilizer, which might provide advantages with respect to already-existing approaches such as the axial gauge. Our results provide new tools to study lattice gauge theories and their quantum simulation, and opens directions for future work at the interface of lattice gauge theory and quantum information.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Centro de Física e Engenharia de Materiais Avançados, G1093706628, Centro de Física e Engenharia de Materiais Avançados, G2031922906, Laboratório de Física para Materiais e Tecnologias Emergentes, G6997658380, Centro de Física e Engenharia de Materiais Avançados, Quantum Simulation of Particle Scattering Processes
OpenAlex ID: W7169598118
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