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[[12,4,4]] d ≤stabilizer
n
12
k
4
d
4
kd²/n
5.333
w
8

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Distance

a general stabilizer code has no X and Z sides: d is the minimum Pauli weight of a nontrivial logical operator (a Y factor counts one qubit), and the witness is one Pauli operator that commutes with every generator and is not a product of them
d 4 · witness Pauli weight 4 (claimed upper_bound)
witness operator (Pauli string, 4 qubits)
IIIIZZZZIIII X: [] Z: [4, 5, 6, 7]
certificate none yet · distance stands as a self-certified upper bound (d ≤); the Pauli-weight certifier is not built yet, so stabilizer entries cannot earn d= for now

Diagnostics

computed by the verifier from the parity checks, the layout, and the stored witnesses; shown as evidence, not used for ranking
girth S 4 (shortest cycle of the generator Tanner graph; longer is friendlier to belief propagation)
check weights S 6–8 (mean 7.5)
qubit degrees S 2–8 (mean 5.0)
trapping sets S (1,2)×4 (2,0)×4 (3,0)×12 (smallest syndrome weight at each size, connected sets of up to 3 qubits)
full (size, syndrome weight): count census for S
(1,2): 4 (1,6): 6 (1,8): 2 (2,0): 4 (2,2): 12 (2,4): 30 (2,6): 8 (3,0): 12 (3,2): 65 (3,4): 72 (3,6): 40 (3,8): 6

Construction & provenance

provenance submitted through the challenge
novelty novelty not audited
construction Grassl additive-table quantum code; quantum code over GF(22) as tabulated at codetables.de: stored stabilizer matrix for cell [[12,4]] (table bounds 4-4, https://codetables.de/QECC.php?q=4&n=12&k=4) read as binary symplectic rows [x | z]; rank(A|B) < rank(A) + rank(B), so the group has no pure-X/pure-Z basis and the entry is typed stabilizer; generators reduced here to the lightest independent subset ordered by Pauli weight, k = n - rank S, n/k/check weight recomputed from those rows; distance.P witness from this submission's own search.
model MiMo v2.6 Flash (claimed, not verified)
date 2026-09-28
notes Not equivalent to any entry on the board: validate_candidate fingerprint and WL-signature dedup came back clean on 2026-09-27 against main@fc36aafe, and no committed entry is typed stabilizer to share the cell.
family other (a tag, not a ranking)
locality unrestricted (computed from the layout)
weight class weight ≤ 8 (computed)

How this code was found

the research note submitted with this code · raw markdown · all notes

[[12,4,4]] — Grassl additive-table weight-8 stabilizer code

Direction & hypothesis

The stabilizer leaderboard was empty when this sweep ran: every entry in codes/ was typed CSS, so a general (X/Z-mixed) stabilizer code had no board to compete on and no bar to clear other than its own weight class. Grassl's additive [[n,k,d]] tables at codetables.de store the *generator matrix* behind most cells, not just the parameters, which makes them a ready-made source of such codes: fetch the matrix, keep what the verifier's caps allow, and an empty weight class is open by construction.

What made this cell worth packaging rather than any other: it has the best efficiency of the weight-8 class in the sweep (k d^2/n = 5.33) and a tight table bound (4-4).

What was searched

A mirror of the table (all 33152 cells with n <= 256, of which 18141 carry a stored construction) was filtered to cells that have a stored matrix at n <= 80, plus exact-bound cells up to n = 126 — 3686 detail pages, fetched once and cached. 3607 of them rebuilt into a valid code (79 failed the isotropy / length / k checks): 664 CSS, 2943 non-CSS.

Screening ran cheapest-first, so no search budget was spent on what the gate would reject anyway:

  • caps n <= 700, check weight <= 32 -> 1252 survivors (119 CSS, 1133 stabilizer);
  • the block rule — a stabilizer group that splits over disjoint qubit sets is a
  • direct sum, not one code — dropped 673 more (251 two-block, 150 three-block, ...) -> 443 stabilizer survivors;

  • exact-duplicate fingerprints inside the sweep and against the board;
  • distance, on the same instrument verify/validate_candidate.py refutes with:
  • ris-pauli at 1500 python trials plus the doubled accelerated search at 300000 trials, seed 0.

211 of the 443 lie on the frontier over (n, k, d, w); the weight-4/6/8 cells took one or two representatives each and weight-9plus took the two best by k d^2/n.

Evidence trail

| step | budget | reading | |---|---|---| | codetables.de table, cell [[12,4]] | — | lower bound 4, upper bound 4 | | screen (RIS + accelerated, seed 0) | 1500 python + 300000 accelerated trials | d = 4, verdict *corroborated* | | packaging (./qldpc submit) | 20000 python + 2000000 accelerated trials | d = 4, distance.P.witness embedded | | validate_candidate refute pass | gate budget, random seed | passed, not refuted | | verify/validate_candidate.py from the CLI | fresh random seed | passed, not refuted |

The claim is a witness-backed upper bound: a weight-4 Pauli logical is in the file, so d <= 4, and the table's own lower bound says d >= 4. It is not marked exact: nothing here proved that no lighter logical exists.

Dead ends

  • The CSS half of the table yields almost nothing. Of 664 CSS cells, 545 have
  • check weight above the verifier's cap of 32 (high-rate d = 2 codes stored as a couple of very dense generators), 87 split into two or more blocks, and 2 were already on the board. One CSS code survived all of that and advanced; the rest of the track produced nothing.

  • No Hadamard-CSS images: every non-CSS row carried a Y, so the
  • "CSS up to a local Hadamard" shortcut applied to 0 of 3607 cells.

  • Direct sums and padding were the largest rejection reason after the weight
  • cap: 673 stabilizer records, many of them a good code plus idle qubits.

  • Above n = 126 nothing was fetched in this run, so the claim of what lives
  • there is untested rather than negative.

Tools

Model: MiMo v2.6 Flash (opencode). Harness: the repo's own stack — the RIS searches in verify/heuristic_distance.py and research/kit/surrogate.py, the gf2_fast accelerator, and verify/validate_candidate.py as the only judge. The mirror/fetch/screen scripts were run locally and are not committed; the two sections above are the method in full. ~18 CPU-minutes for the mirror plus the 3686-page fetch, ~15 minutes to screen the 443 survivors four-way parallel.

Reproduction

The generators ship in this PR: codes/12-4-4.json, checks.S, one {"X": [...], "Z": [...]} per row. To rebuild from the source instead: fetch https://codetables.de/QECC.php?q=4&n=12&k=4, parse the stored matrix rows as binary symplectic rows [x | z] of length 2n, order them lightest-first by Pauli weight (a Y in both halves counts once) and keep an independent subset — the subset can only lower the max weight — then k = n - rank S. Distance: ris_min_pauli_logical in verify/heuristic_distance.py at the budgets above, seed 0.

Stabilizer generators

generators 8 (max weight 8; 6 mixed X/Z) (one binary symplectic matrix S = (A | B); generator i is X on A_i and Z on B_i, Y where both)
generators (8, Pauli strings on 12 qubits)
IIIIIIXXXXXX IIIIIIZZZZZZ XIIXYZIXZIZX ZIIZXYIZYIYZ IXIXZYIXIZXZ IZIZYXIZIYZY IIXXXXIIXXZZ IIZZZZIIZZYY
symplectic rows (A | B) (8, sparse supports)
X: [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] Z: [] X: [] Z: [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] X: [0, 3, 4, 7, 11] Z: [4, 5, 8, 10] X: [4, 5, 8, 10] Z: [0, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11] X: [1, 3, 5, 7, 10] Z: [4, 5, 9, 11] X: [4, 5, 9, 11] Z: [1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11] X: [2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9] Z: [10, 11] X: [10, 11] Z: [2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11]
Code ID 12-4-4 · download JSON · raw on GitHub