In quantum error models, isotropic errors are those that affect all states of the system equally, without a preferred direction in Hilbert space. For example, depolarizing noise is isotropic. A depolarizing channel replaces a qubit state with the maximally mixed state with some probability $p$. No basis or axis is privileged. The error distribution is thus uniform over possible error directions. On the other hand, independent errors are assumed to act locally and independently across different qubits or gates. For example, an independent bit-flip error model applies an $X$ operator to each qubit with probability $p$, independently of what happens to other qubits. In this case, errors are uncorrelated across subsystems.
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