Stabilizer Codes and Quantum Error Correction

Controlling operational errors and decoherence is one of the major challenges facing the field of quantum computation and other attempts to create specified many-particle entangled states. The field of quantum error correction has developed to meet this challenge. A group-theoretical structure and associated subclass of quantum codes, the stabilizer codes, has proved particularly fruitful in producing codes and in understanding the structure of both specific codes and classes of codes. I will give an overview of the field of quantum error correction and the formalism of stabilizer codes. In the context of stabilizer codes, I will discuss a number of known codes, the capacity of a quantum channel, bounds on quantum codes, and fault-tolerant quantum computation.