Quantum Error Correction Beyond the Bounded Distance Decoding Limit

In this paper, we consider quantum error correction over depolarizing channels with nonbinary low-density parity-check codes defined over Galois field of size 2
^p
. The proposed quantum error correcting codes are based on the binary quasi-cyclic Calderbank, Shor, and Steane (CSS) codes. The resulting quantum codes outperform the best known quantum codes and surpass the performance limit of the bounded distance decoder. By increasing the size of the underlying Galois field, i.e., 2
^p
, the error floors are considerably improved.