Quantum weight enumerators

Abstract

In a recent paper, Shor and Laflamme (see Phys. Rev. Lett., vol.78, p.1600-2, 1997) defined two "weight enumerators" for quantum error-correcting codes, connected by a MacWilliams transform, and used them to give a linear programming bound for quantum codes. We introduce two new enumerators which, while much less powerful at producing bounds, are useful tools nonetheless. The new enumerators are connected by a much simpler duality transform, clarifying the duality between Shor and Laflamme's enumerators. We also use the new enumerators to give a simpler condition for a quantum code to have specified minimum distance, and to extend the enumerator theory to codes with block size greater than 2.