Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 33 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Here the number of errors means the number of affected physical qubits: assume that all errors supported on at most qubits are jointly correctable. It does not mean the cardinality of an arbitrary selected error list. Let be any Pauli operator of weight at most . Split its support into disjoint sets , each of size at most , and write . Each Pauli factor is Hermitian, so take , to get , up to an irrelevant scalar phase if different Pauli representatives are used. The Knill--Laflamme condition givesThis is precisely quantum error detection: a projective measurement with outcomes either detects departure from the code or leaves the accepted logical state unchanged up to a scalar. Some errors can be harmless scalars on the code, particularly for degenerate correction; detection is not required to flag such an error with certainty.
Any linear operator supported on at most qubits is a linear combination of Pauli operators on those qubits, so its code compression is scalar by linearity. ThusThis is correction implies detection at twice the weight. The premise about all locations and all error types is essential: merely correcting one selected operator gives no universal statement about every operator of twice its weight.