Iterative Decoding of Stabilizer Codes under Radiation-Induced Correlated Noise

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 18 Mar 2026] Iterative Decoding of Stabilizer Codes under Radiation-Induced Correlated Noise Anuj K. Nayak, Paul G. Baity, Peter J. Love, Nicholas Jeon, Byung-Jun Yoon, Adolfy Hoisie, Lav R. Varshney Fault-tolerant quantum computation demands extremely low logical error rates, yet superconducting qubit arrays are subject to radiation-induced correlated noise arising from cosmic-ray muon-generated quasiparticles. The quasiparticle density is unknown and time-varying, resulting in a mismatch between the true noise statistics and the priors assumed by standard decoders, and consequently, degraded logical performance. We formalize joint noise sensing and decoding using syndrome measurements by modeling the QP density as a latent variable, which governs correlation in physical errors and syndrome measurements. Starting from a variational expectation--maximization approach, we derive an iterative algorithm that alternates between QP density estimation and syndrome-based decoding under the updated noise model. Simulations of surface-code and bivariate bicycle quantum memory under radiation-induced correlated noise demonstrate a measurable reduction in logical error probability relative to baseline decoding with a uniform prior. Beyond improved decoding performance, the inferred QP density provides diagnostic information relevant to device characterization, shielding, and chip design. These results indicate that integrating physical noise estimation into decoding can mitigate correlated noise effects and relax effective error-rate requirements for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Comments: 14 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, 2 algorithms Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Information Theory (cs.IT); Signal Processing (eess.SP) Cite as: arXiv:2603.18231 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.18231v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.18231 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Anuj Keshava Nayak [view email] [v1] Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:33:29 UTC (2,103 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cs cs.IT eess eess.SP math math.IT References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)