Classical enhancement of quantum-error-correcting codes

Abstract

We present a general formalism for quantum-error-correcting codes that encode both classical and quantum information (the EACQ formalism). This formalism unifies the entanglement-assisted coding theory and the classical coding theory in the sense that, after the encoding, error-correcting, and decoding steps, the encoded quantum and classical information can be correctly recovered by the receiver. We formally define this kind of quantum codes using stabilizer language, and derive the appropriate error-correcting conditions. We give several examples to demonstrate the construction of such codes.