A Symplectic Proof of the Quantum Singleton Bound
Quantum Physics
2026-03-31 v2 Information Theory
math.IT
Abstract
We present a symplectic linear-algebraic proof of the Quantum Singleton Bound for stabiliser quantum error-correcting codes together with a Lean4 formalisation of the linear-algebraic argument. The proof is formulated in the language of finite-dimensional symplectic vector spaces modelling Pauli operators and relies on distance-based erasure correctability and the cleaning lemma. Using a dimension-counting argument within the symplectic stabiliser framework, we derive the bound for any stabiliser code. This approach isolates the algebraic structure underlying the bound and avoids the heavier analytic machinery that appears in entropy-based proofs, while remaining well-suited to formal verification.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.20186,
title = {A Symplectic Proof of the Quantum Singleton Bound},
author = {Frederick Dehmel and Shilun Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20186},
year = {2026}
}
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6 pages