Error-correction zoo

Error correction is what ensures that the audio in your phone calls remains sharp, your hard drives do not deteriorate too quickly, and signals can be reliably transmitted to remote satellites.

Over multiple decades, and with the explosion of the information age, an enormous variety of error-correction schemes have been developed. Recently, a radically new type of error correction was introduced, one that can protect the quantum information that is stored in a quantum computer or that is communicated over a quantum network.

We created the Error-correction (EC) Zoo (errorcorrectionzoo.org) to categorize and to organize known classical and quantum error-correction schemes. Code entries form the primary content of the zoo. An entry can be a specific instance of a well-known code or a large family of codes, depending on community interest. The idea is to have a dedicated up-to-date webpage for each family, collecting original work, related protocols, and real-world implementations. Codes are organized into kingdoms by alphabet (or Hilbert space structure in the quantum case), with “parent” and “cousin” fields listing notable relations and connections. At the time of submission, there are over 300 codes.

A useful feature of the zoo is separation of data storage from presentation. Code entry information is stored in a structured human-readable YAML format on Github, one file per code. A LaTeX and a basic reference manager are built in, and data can then be presented in various formats, including HTML, PDF, or visual formats such as a code graph. This mechanism also allows for the generation of code lists, which can consist of, e.g., children of a particular code or of codes united by a certain feature.