Local invariants of stabilizer codes

Abstract

In Phys. Rev. A 58, 1833 (1998), Grassl et al. presented a family of polynomial invariants which separate the orbits of multiqubit density operators $\rho$ under the action of the local unitary group. We consider this family of invariants for the class of those $\rho$ that are the projection operators describing stabilizer codes and give a complete translation of these invariants into the binary framework in which stabilizer codes are usually described. Such an investigation of local invariants of quantum codes is of natural importance in quantum coding theory, since locally equivalent codes have the same error-correcting capabilities and local invariants are powerful tools to explore their structure. Moreover, the present result is relevant in the context of multipartite entanglement and the development of the measurement-based model of quantum computation known as the one-way quantum computer.