Description
Member of a family of two-dimensionally local CSS QLDPC codes on a planar square lattice with open boundaries whose stabilizer generators are translates of one \(X\)-type and one \(Z\)-type tile. A tile is a set of lattice edges confined to a box of fixed size \((D+1)\times(D+1)\), so such codes generalize the surface code by allowing larger boxes and stabilizer generators of weight greater than four. The tile pair is placed at every vertex of a rectangular bulk region, and tiles placed along its sides are truncated to the edges of the lattice, which yields the boundary generators [2].
Data qubits sit on the edges of the lattice, and stabilizer checks are anchored at its vertices, translation invariantly in the bulk. A tile code is specified by a local structure together with a global structure. The local structure is the pair of \(X\)- and \(Z\)-tiles, chosen so that any relative placement of an \(X\)- and a \(Z\)-tile has even overlap, ensuring commutativity. The global structure is a rectangular layout of bulk-stabilizer positions, and the data qubits are the edges of the union of the boxes anchored there. Boundary stabilizers are then added on the four sides, e.g., \(D\) layers of \(X\)-tiles above and below the bulk and \(D\) layers of \(Z\)-tiles to its left and right, each truncated to the lattice. The layout is chosen so that any \(X\)- and \(Z\)-boundary box either do not overlap or overlap only inside the lattice, so that truncation preserves commutativity [2]. Afterwards, qubits that lie in no \(X\)-type or in no \(Z\)-type stabilizer are removed, along with stabilizers whose support becomes empty. Under two conditions, the construction yields an \([[n,k,d]]\) code with logical dimension \(k=2D^2\) [3]. The conditions are that the tiles not be confined to a strip of width or height \(D\) and that they give rise to total topological order. Total topological order strengthens topological order by requiring that any local Pauli operator commuting with all stabilizers included in a quadrant of the plane be a product of included stabilizers [3]. Under the same conditions, the logical operators admit a canonical symplectic basis localized along the lattice boundary. The basis is generated by a cellular automaton with \(2D^2\) update rules, making the logical operators amenable to lattice-surgery techniques [3]. The construction admits higher-dimensional generalizations [3; Sec. 5.4]. The term tile code refers by default to the two-dimensional case.
With a \(3\times 3\) box and weight-6 stabilizers, the construction yields a \([[288,8,12]]\) code, first found in Ref. [1], whose code-parameter efficiency \(kd^2/n\) is four times that of the rotated surface code [2]. See Ref. [2; Table I] for weight-8 codes in \(3\times 3\) and \(4\times 4\) boxes.
Protection
Code distance scales with the lattice dimensions provided the stabilizer tiles satisfy the topological-order condition. Distances of explicit examples are estimated with a probabilistic algorithm and then confirmed exactly using integer linear programming [2].Rate
Logical dimension \(k=2D^2\) for stabilizer tiles confined to a \((D+1)\times(D+1)\) box but not to a strip and satisfying the total-topological-order condition [3]. Boundary layouts admitting commuting corner stabilizers reduce this by one per added corner stabilizer. The code-parameter efficiency \(kd^2/n\) reaches 12.7 for the \([[512,18,19]]\) code, more than twelve times that of the rotated surface code [2].Gates
For stabilizer tiles not confined to a strip and giving rise to total topological order, derived automorphisms \(T_x\) and \(T_y\) implement products of logical CNOT gates. They do so fault-tolerantly and with low overhead by extending the lattice on one side and shrinking it on the other. Their action on the logical space is multiplication by \(x\) or \(y\) on \(\mathbb{F}_2[x^{\pm},y^{\pm}]/(f,g)\) [3]. This operation is trivial for the surface code.Fault Tolerance
Directional tile codes are a subfamily whose stabilizer supports form an ordered connected string. They admit a depth-\(w\) syndrome-extraction circuit for weight-\(w\) stabilizer generators built only from nearest-neighbor iSWAP gates on a square grid [4]. Routing qubits are inserted near the boundary to keep every step of the walk nearest-neighbor.Barbell codes are a subfamily of tile codes whose check qubits are paired so that each pair shares one near-local coupler. They admit an explicit depth-\((w+4)\) syndrome-extraction cycle for weight-\(w\) stabilizer generators, based on superdense syndrome extraction [5,6].Fault-tolerant logical multi-qubit Pauli measurements, both within a single patch and between two patches, can be performed without additional connectivity requirements via the protocol of Ref. [7].Cousins
- Kitaev surface code— Tile codes generalize the planar surface code. The unrotated planar surface code is recovered by choosing the surface-code tiles together with an appropriate layout [2].
- Rotated surface code— The planar rotated surface code is recovered from the tile-code construction using a rotated layout [2]. The most efficient tile codes outperform the rotated surface code in the efficiency \(kd^2/n\) by factors of up to more than 12 [2].
- Bivariate bicycle (BB) code— Tile codes are open-boundary (planar) analogues of bivariate bicycle (BB) codes, which arise by tiling a torus with stabilizer tiles [2]. Tile codes instead have open boundaries and thus retain true \(O(1)\)-locality on a planar 2D lattice [2]. Sharing the same bulk stabilizer tiles does not yield the same code. The planar \([[288,8,12]]\) tile code has the same bulk stabilizers as the \((-2,2)\)-BB code. That BB code requires a \(217\times 217\) torus to attain its maximal logical dimension \(k=16\) and yields a \([[98,6,12]]\) code on a \(7\times 7\) torus [1]. The logical dimension of a BB code is determined by the period of the same cellular automaton that generates tile-code logical operators [3].
- Hypergraph product (HGP) code— Pruned hypergraph-product constructions of planar BB codes are recovered by the tile-code construction using an unrotated bulk-stabilizer layout [2].
- La-cross code— Open-boundary La-cross codes are instances of tile codes whose stabilizers are induced by univariate polynomials [3].
- Multivariate multicycle (MM) code— Tile codes and MM codes with two polynomials in two variables arise from the same three-term Koszul complex with qubits placed at the middle level. MM codes take the complex over the group algebra \(\mathbb{F}_q[x,y]/\langle x^{\ell_1}-1,y^{\ell_2}-1\rangle\), yielding periodic boundaries. Tile codes take the higher global sections \(R^1\Gamma\) of the corresponding Koszul complex of vector bundles on \(\mathbb{P}^1\times\mathbb{P}^1\), yielding open boundaries [3,8]. The tile-code construction extends to \(t\) spatial dimensions using \((\mathbb{P}^1)^{t}\) and \(t\) polynomials in \(t\) variables, yielding codes that are local in \(t\) rather than two dimensions [3; Sec. 5.4]. For example, the four-dimensional instance built from four polynomials in \(w,x,y,z\) with \(L=M=N=P=3\) has parameters \([[486,24,d]]\) with \(10\leq d\leq 15\) [3]. This is the same length and logical dimension as the \([[486,24,12]]\) MM code with \(t=4\) over \(\mathbb{Z}_3^{4}\) [8].
- Abelian topological code— The stabilizer tiles of a tile code have to give rise to topological order in the bulk for the code distance to scale with the layout dimensions [2]. They have to give rise to the stronger total topological order for the logical dimension to be \(k=2D^2\) [3]. This is an extra assumption and not part of the definition. The \(X\)-tile can be written as a pair of Laurent polynomials \(f,g\) over \(\mathbb{F}_2[x^{\pm},y^{\pm}]\). A sufficient algebraic criterion for total topological order is that the restrictions of \(f\) and \(g\) to each quadrant polynomial ring admit no common non-unit factor. The restrictions must also satisfy an additional isomorphism condition [3]. Admissible tiles for which \(f\) and \(g\) share a non-unit factor can yield valid tile codes whose distance does not scale. For example, \(f=g=1+x+y\) in a \(2\times 2\) box yields codes such as \([[32,2,2]]\) and \([[288,2,2]]\). Planar tile codes can be obtained from bivariate bicycle codes by condensing anyons of the underlying Abelian topological order at the boundary [1].
Primary Hierarchy
References
- [1]
- Z. Liang, J. N. Eberhardt, and Y.-A. Chen, “Planar quantum low-density parity-check codes with open boundaries”, (2025) arXiv:2504.08887
- [2]
- V. Steffan, S. H. Choe, N. P. Breuckmann, F. R. F. Pereira, and J. N. Eberhardt, “Tile Codes: High-Efficiency Quantum Codes on a Lattice with Boundary”, (2025) arXiv:2504.09171
- [3]
- N. P. Breuckmann, S. H. Choe, J. N. Eberhardt, F. R. F. Pereira, and V. Steffan, “Logical Operators and Derived Automorphisms of Tile Codes”, (2025) arXiv:2511.14589
- [4]
- B. Gu, T. Noszko, V. Steffan, J. N. Eberhardt, J. Roffe, J. Eisert, and S. Koutsioumpas, “Nearest-neighbour gates are all you need: High-rate quantum low-density parity-check codes on a planar grid”, (2026) arXiv:2606.19482
- [5]
- C. Gidney and C. Jones, “New circuits and an open source decoder for the color code”, (2023) arXiv:2312.08813
- [6]
- S. H. Choe, V. Steffan, F. Vigneau, P. Parrado-Rodríguez, H.-S. Ku, M. Leib, F. R. F. Pereira, and F. Šimkovic, “Barbell Codes: qLDPC Codes for Superconducting Quantum Hardware”, (2026) arXiv:2606.06062
- [7]
- Y. Yang, G. Zhang, and Y. Li, “Planar fault-tolerant logical measurements with low qubit overhead”, npj Quantum Information (2026) arXiv:2506.18061 DOI
- [8]
- F. A. Mian, O. Gwilliam, and S. Krastanov, “Multivariate Multicycle Codes for Complete Single-Shot Decoding”, (2026) arXiv:2601.18879
Page edit log
- Victor V. Albert (2026-09-26) — most recent
- Victor V. Albert (2026-08-26)
- Victor V. Albert (2026-06-11)
- Tomasz Andrzejewski (2026-06-11)
Cite as:
“Tile quantum code”, The Error Correction Zoo (V. V. Albert & P. Faist, eds.), 2026. https://errorcorrectionzoo.org/c/tile, arXiv:2606.11484