Annihilator and twisted Euclidean duality for quasi-polycyclic codes

Abstract

Let $f\in\mathbb F_q[x]$ be a monic polynomial of degree $m$ with $f(0)\ne 0$, and let $\mathcal R=\mathbb F_q[x]/\langle f\rangle$. Under coefficient expansion, a quasi-polycyclic (QP) code of index $n$ corresponds to an $\mathcal R$-submodule of $\mathcal R^n$. In this paper, we study QP codes with respect to the annihilator duality. We show that this form is non-degenerate and that the annihilator dual of a QP code is again a QP code. We also give an equivalent description of the dual in terms of the $\mathcal R$-valued dot product, which leads to self-orthogonality criteria. We determine the Gram matrix of the annihilator form and obtain an explicit formula for its determinant. In coefficient coordinates, this shows that the annihilator dual can be viewed as a twisted Euclidean dual. Using this description, we characterize when a coordinatewise $\mathbb F_q$-linear map converts annihilator duality into ordinary Euclidean duality. For squarefree $f$, we show that annihilator duality decomposes into ordinary Euclidean duality on the components arising from the Chinese Remainder Theorem. This gives simple criteria for self-orthogonal, self-dual, dual-containing, and complementary-dual QP codes. We show how the annihilator dual interacts with the Hamming weight enumerator and compute the MacWilliams transform associated with that duality. Finally, we apply these results to Calderbank--Shor--Steane and Steane-enlarged quantum-code constructions over $\mathcal R$ and, when a suitable duality-preserving coordinate map exists, over $\mathbb F_q$. This gives binary and ternary stabilizer codes with minimum-distance lower bounds matching the best known bounds, most of which arise from rings $\mathcal R$ that are not fields.