Error-Transparent Code Switching Between Permutation-Invariant Codes with Transversal Clifford and Icosahedral Gates
Abstract
Code switching moves an encoded qubit between two codes whose transversal gates together are universal, but the switching operation itself is usually not transversal and can spread a single fault into an uncorrectable error. We study switching between two permutation-invariant codes on the same qubits, one with transversal Clifford gates and one with transversal gates from the non-Clifford binary icosahedral group. Both are compatible with transversal X, Z, and F = HS†, and the encoders with this property form a small linear space. We show that its codes of distance at least three are cut out by at most two quadratic equations, and that all of them have the same error geometry in the sense that their single-qubit error states have the same inner products. It follows that a switching unitary commuting with qubit permutations and with the shared transversal gates at every instant, and tolerating one single-qubit fault at an unknown time, exists if and only if the two codes are joined by a continuous path of distance-three codes. Such a switch can be made error transparent, so that a fault at any moment reaches the target code as the same single-qubit error. For real encoders, the distance-three codes are the solutions of a single quadratic equation, and on thirteen qubits, they form an explicit circle through two Clifford codes and an icosahedral code. We construct the switching unitary along this circle as a collective operator, leaving its synthesis into physical control open, and verify that its recovery infidelity per fault is at machine precision, whereas two natural alternatives leave average infidelities of $0.13$ and $0.85$. A survey over odd qubit numbers up to $29$ lists where such switches exist.
Related
BibTeX
@misc{bradshaw2026errortransparent,
title = {{Error-Transparent Code Switching Between Permutation-Invariant Codes with Transversal Clifford and Icosahedral Gates}},
author = {Zachary P. Bradshaw},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.05189},
eprint = {2610.05189},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05189},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Error-Transparent Code Switching Between Permutation-Invariant Codes with Transversal Clifford and Icosahedral Gates
AU - Zachary P. Bradshaw
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.05189
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05189
AB - Code switching moves an encoded qubit between two codes whose transversal gates together are universal, but the switching operation itself is usually not transversal and can spread a single fault into an uncorrectable error. We study switching between two permutation-invariant codes on the same qubits, one with transversal Clifford gates and one with transversal gates from the non-Clifford binary icosahedral group. Both are compatible with transversal X, Z, and F = HS^†, and the encoders with this property form a small linear space. We show that its codes of distance at least three are cut out by at most two quadratic equations, and that all of them have the same error geometry in the sense that their single-qubit error states have the same inner products. It follows that a switching unitary commuting with qubit permutations and with the shared transversal gates at every instant, and tolerating one single-qubit fault at an unknown time, exists if and only if the two codes are joined by a continuous path of distance-three codes. Such a switch can be made error transparent, so that a fault at any moment reaches the target code as the same single-qubit error. For real encoders, the distance-three codes are the solutions of a single quadratic equation, and on thirteen qubits, they form an explicit circle through two Clifford codes and an icosahedral code. We construct the switching unitary along this circle as a collective operator, leaving its synthesis into physical control open, and verify that its recovery infidelity per fault is at machine precision, whereas two natural alternatives leave average infidelities of $0.13$ and $0.85$. A survey over odd qubit numbers up to $29$ lists where such switches exist.
ER -