On the Classification of Hermitian Self-Dual Additive Codes Over GF(9)

Abstract

Additive codes over GF(9) that are self-dual with respect to the Hermitian trace inner product have a natural application in quantum information theory, where they correspond to ternary quantum error-correcting codes. However, these codes have so far received far less interest from coding theorists than self-dual additive codes over GF(4), which correspond to binary quantum codes. Self-dual additive codes over GF(9) have been classified up to length 8, and in this paper we extend the complete classification to codes of lengths 9 and 10. The classification is obtained by using a new algorithm that combines two graph representations of self-dual additive codes. The search space is first reduced by the fact that every code can be mapped to a weighted graph, and a different graph is then introduced that transforms the problem of code equivalence into a problem of graph isomorphism. By an extension technique, we are able to classify all optimal codes of lengths 11 and 12. There are 56 005 876 (11, 311, 5) codes and 6493 (12, 312, 6) codes. We also find the smallest codes with trivial automorphism group.