Complementary 3D color codes for transversal quantum logic
Abstract
Transversal logical gates provide a direct route to fault-tolerant quantum computation, but the Eastin-Knill theorem forbids a universal transversal gate set within a single quantum error-correcting code. We propose a hybrid architecture based on the tetrahedral three-dimensional color code and its Hadamard-transformed counterpart, which we call the H-tetrahedral code. The two encodings support complementary transversal non-Clifford operations. Combined with bitwise Hadamard transformations that switch between the two encodings and a one-way transversal logical CNOT from the tetrahedral code to the H-tetrahedral code, these operations realize an almost-universal transversal logical gate set that enables both the creation of entanglement and logical states with magic. We complete a universal gate set through a pieceably fault-tolerant round-robin construction of a logical controlled- gate between two H-tetrahedral codes. This logical entangling gate is interleaved with reduced-overhead Steane-type syndrome extraction using logical two-dimensional color-code auxiliary qubits. Our construction provides a new route toward implementing classically hard-to-simulate quantum algorithms where magic and most entangling operations are transversal while the resource overhead is concentrated in a small number of non-transversal Clifford entangling operations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.05107,
title = {Complementary 3D color codes for transversal quantum logic},
author = {Friederike Butt and Luis Colmenarez and Erik Weilandt and Tom Peham and Robert Wille and Markus Müller},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.05107},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
14 pages, 8 figures