Infinite Distance Extrapolation: How error mitigation can enhance quantum error correction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel approach combining quantum error mitigation and correction by extrapolating to infinite code distance using zero-noise extrapolation, improving error reduction in quantum computations.

Contribution

It presents a new paradigm where QEC is integrated into QEM via error extrapolation to infinite code distance, offering a hybrid error mitigation strategy.

Findings

Method reduces errors in expectation values under realistic noise models.

Performance remains effective even with non-stabiliser input states.

Extrapolation to infinite distance enhances fault-tolerant quantum computation.

Abstract

Quantum error mitigation (QEM) and quantum error correction (QEC) are two research areas that are often considered as distinct entities, and the problem of combining the two approaches in a non-trivial way has only recently started to be explored. In this paper, we explore a paradigm at the intersection of the two, based on the error mitigation technique of Zero-Noise Extrapolation (ZNE), that uses the distance of an error correcting code as a noise parameter. This is distinct from some alternative approaches, as QEC is here used as a subroutine inside the QEM framework, while other proposals use QEM as a subroutine inside QEC experiments. Intuitively, we exploit the fact that a reduction in the physical noise level is analogous to an increase in the code distance, as both of them result in a decrease in the logical error rate. As such, the extrapolation to zero noise in the case of ZNE becomes comparable to the extrapolation to infinite distance in the case of this method. We describe how to calculate expectation values from a fault-tolerant computation, and we gain some analytical intuition for our ansatz choice. We explore the performance of the considered method to reduce the errors in a range of expectation values for a realistic circuit-level noise model and realistic device imperfections on the rotated surface code, and we particularly show that the performance of the method holds even in the case of non-stabiliser input states.