Strong Resilience of Topological Codes to Depolarization

The inevitable presence of decoherence effects in systems suitable for quantum computation necessitates effective error-correction schemes to protect information from noise. We compute the stability of the toric code to depolarization by mapping the quantum problem onto a classical disordered eight-vertex Ising model. By studying the stability of the related ferromagnetic phase both via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations and via the duality method, we are able to demonstrate an increased error threshold of 18.9(3)% when noise correlations are taken into account. Remarkably, this agrees within error bars with the result for a different class of codes-topological color codes-where the mapping yields interesting new types of interacting eight-vertex models.