Asymptotic Improvements to Provable Algorithms for the Code Equivalence Problem

We present several new provable algorithms for two variants of the code equivalence problem on linear error-correcting codes, the Linear Code Equivalence Problem (LCE) and the Permutation Code Equivalence Problem (PCE). Specifically, for arbitrary codes of block length n and dimension k over any finite field $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ , we show: 1) A deterministic algorithm running in $2^{n + o(n+q)}$ time for LCE. 2) A randomized algorithm running in $2^{n/2 + o(n+q)}$ time for LCE and PCE. 3) A quantum algorithm running in $2^{n/3 + o(n+q)}$ time for LCE and PCE. The second two algorithms improve on recent work of Nowakowski (PQCrypto 2025), which gave algorithms with similar running times but only for code equivalence on random codes and only over fields of order $q \geq 7$ .