The Entropy Characterization of Quantum MDS Codes

Abstract

An $[[n,k,d]]$ quantum maximum-distance-separable code maps $k$ source qudits to $n$ coded qudits such that any $n-(d-1)$ coded qudits may recover all source qudits and $n=k+2(d-1)$. The entropy of the joint state of the reference system of $k$ qudits and the $n$ coded qudits is fully characterized - the joint state must be pure, i.e., has entropy zero; and any sub-system whose number of qudits is at most half of $k+n$, the total number of qudits in the joint state must be maximally mixed, i.e., has entropy equal to its size.