Trotter Errors and the Emergence of Chaos in Quantum Simulation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Trotter errors and native hardware errors influence the emergence of chaos in quantum simulations on NISQ processors, highlighting optimization strategies for simulation accuracy.

Contribution

It demonstrates how to balance Trotter and native errors to improve quantum simulation accuracy and explores the relationship between errors and chaos emergence.

Findings

Optimized Trotter step sizes reduce simulation errors.

Native hardware errors significantly impact fidelity.

Chaos emergence correlates with error interplay.

Abstract

As noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors increase in size and complexity, their use as general purpose quantum simulators will rely on algorithms based on the Trotter-Suzuki expansion. We run quantum simulations on a small, highly accurate quantum processor, and show how one can optimize simulation accuracy by balancing algorithmic (Trotter) errors against native errors specific to the quantum hardware at hand. We further study the interplay between native errors, Trotter errors, and the emergence of chaos as seen in measurements of a time averaged fidelity-out-of-time-ordered-correlator