Error Correction Zoo

Error correction is what ensures that the audio in your phone calls remains sharp, your hard drives do not deteriorate too quickly, and signals can be reliably transmitted to remote satellites. Over multiple decades, and with the explosion of the information age, an enormous variety of error-correction schemes were developed. Recently, a radically new type of error correction was introduced, one that can protect the quantum information that is stored in a quantum computer or that is communicated over a quantum network. Quantum enhancements also help with classical information transmission, yielding hybrid classical-quantum error-correction encodings. We created the Error Correction Zoo to categorize and to organize known classical and quantum error-correction schemes. It is inspired by other similar zoos, including the complexity zoo, the quantum algorithm zoo, the quantum protocol zoo, the qubit zoo, and the entropy zoo. Complementing popular coding theory databases such as Code Tables and MinT, the EC Zoo provides succinct pedagogical descriptions as well as relations and hierarchies among different codes.