Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

One of the more annoying properties of quantum computers is their propensity to "decohere", i.e., interact with the environment to the extent that they might as well be classical. It turns out, however, that just as it is possible to protect classical information against noise using error-correcting codes, something similar is possible at the quantum level, using what are known as "quantum codes". I'll discuss quantum codes from a mathematical (as opposed to physical or computational) perspective, and in particular describe our "additive" construction of such codes, which still accounts for nearly every good quantum code we know.

This is (ancient) joint work with Calderbank, Shor, and Sloane.