Improving readout in quantum simulations with repetition codes

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of circular repetition codes on IBM Quantum hardware to improve the accuracy of quantum simulations, particularly in quantum chemistry and physics, by mitigating noise effects.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable circular repetition code scheme compatible with IBM hardware and demonstrates its effectiveness in quantum chemistry and physics simulations.

Findings

Improved accuracy in VQE electronic structure calculations.

Enhanced simulation of quantum Ising model dynamics.

Validation of the scheme on multiple IBM Quantum devices.

Abstract

Near term quantum computers suffer from the presence of different noise sources. In order to mitigate for this effect and acquire results with significantly better accuracy, there is the urge of designing efficient error correction or error mitigation schemes. The cost of such techniques is usually high in terms of resource requirements, either in hardware or at the algorithmic level. In this work, we follow a pragmatic approach and we use repetition codes as scalable schemes with the potential to provide more accurate solutions to problems of interest in quantum chemistry and physics. We investigate different repetition code layouts and we propose a circular repetition scheme with connectivity requirements that are native on IBM Quantum hardware. We showcase our approach in multiple IBM Quantum devices and validate our results using a simplified theoretical noise model. We highlight the effect of using the proposed scheme in an electronic structure VQE calculation and in the simulation of time evolution for a quantum Ising model.