We review two algorithmic advances that bring us closer to reliable quantum simulations of model systems in high-energy physics and beyond on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. The first method is the dimensional expressivity analysis of quantum circuits, which allows for constructing minimal but maximally expressive quantum circuits. The second method is an efficient mitigation of readout errors on quantum devices. Both methods can lead to significant improvements in quantum simulations, e.g. when variational quantum eigensolvers are used. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum technologies in particle physics'.
We review two algorithmic advances that bring us closer to reliable quantum simulations of model systems in high-energy physics and beyond on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. The first method is the dimensional expressivity analysis of quantum circuits, which allows for constructing minimal but maximally expressive quantum circuits. The second method is an efficient mitigation of readout errors on quantum devices. Both methods can lead to significant improvements in quantum simulations, e.g. when variational quantum eigensolvers are used. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum technologies in particle physics'.
This research paper provides a comprehensive review of quantum simulation methods for lattice gauge theories during the current era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing. It focuses on the fundamental framework used to understand strong interactions in high-energy physics and explores how quantum devices can overcome the limitations of traditional computational methods, such as the sign problem found in classical simulations. The manuscript is built around three primary pillars that are critical for near-term progress. The first pillar involves encoding strategies, describing the movement away from simple mapping techniques toward more advanced, compact methods that significantly decrease the number of required quantum bits by focusing only on physically relevant states and exploiting local gauge constraints. The second pillar analyzes specific variational quantum algorithms that use flexible circuit structures to find low-energy states, comparing different approaches based on their circuit depth and suitability for current hardware. The third pillar evaluates various error mitigation techniques used to extract accurate information from imperfect quantum hardware, such as methods that amplify and then remove noise or those that use physical symmetries to detect and discard errors. Additionally, the paper compares different hardware technologies—including those based on superconducting circuits, trapped atoms, and ions—to weigh their respective benefits, such as gate speed and connectivity, against their drawbacks. It also introduces emerging hybrid approaches that combine quantum circuits with artificial neural networks to improve simulation power and state representation. Ultimately, the review identifies pathways toward achieving practical advantages in the field and discusses the challenges that remain for scaling these systems to larger sizes.
Quantum computing has emerged as a transformative paradigm capable of addressing computational challenges beyond the reach of classical systems.In the current era of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices, practical quantum hardware is characterized by limited qubit counts, short coherence times, gate errors, and the absence of full error correction.Despite these constraints, significant progress has been made in developing quantum machine learning (QML) techniques tailored to operate on near-term quantum processors.This paper presents a comprehensive review of Quantum Machine Learning in the context of NISQ computing.We first outline the fundamental principles of quantum computing, including qubits, superposition, entanglement, and quantum parallelism, followed by a detailed discussion of the NISQ computing model and its hardware limitations.The review then examines hybrid quantum-classical learning frameworks, variational quantum algorithms, quantum data encoding strategies, and noise mitigation techniques that enable practical implementation on existing platforms.Emerging applications across healthcare, finance, cybersecurity, climate modeling, and materials science are also surveyed to highlight the real-world potential of QML.Furthermore, key challenges such as scalability, trainability issues, and algorithmic robustness are analyzed, along with current research efforts aimed at overcoming these barriers.The paper concludes by identifying promising future directions for advancing QML toward quantum advantage.This review aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a structured understanding of the capabilities, limitations, and opportunities of quantum machine learning in the NISQ era .
Finding ground states and low-lying excitations of a given Hamiltonian is one of the most important problems in many fields of physics. As a novel approach, quantum computing on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices offers the prospect to efficiently perform such computations and may eventually outperform classical computers. However, current quantum devices still suffer from inherent quantum noise. In this work, we propose an error mitigation scheme suitable for parametric quantum circuits. This scheme is based on projecting a general quantum noise channel onto depolarization errors. Our method can efficiently reduce errors in quantum computations, which we demonstrate by carrying out simulations both on classical and IBM's quantum devices. In particular, we test the performance of the method by computing the mass gap of the transverse-field Ising model using the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm.
First quantum computers very recently have demonstrated “quantum supremacy” or “quantum advantage Executing a computation that would have been impossible on a classical machine. Today's quantum computers follow the NISQ paradigm: They exhibit error rates that are much higher than in conventional electronics and have insufficient quantum resources to support powerful error correction protocols. This raises questions which relevant computations are within the reach of NISQ architectures. Several NISQ-era algorithms” are assumed to match the specifics of such computers; for instance, variational optimisers are based on intertwining relatively short quantum and classical computations, thus maximizing the chances of success. This paper will critically assess the promise and challenge of NISQ computing. What has this field achieved so far, what are we likely to achieve soon, where do we have to be skeptical and wait for the advent of larger-scale fully error-corrected architectures?
Abstract The inherent noise in current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices presents a major obstacle to the accurate implementation of quantum algorithms such as the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) for quantum chemistry applications. This study examines the impact of error mitigation strategies on VQE performance. We show that, for small molecular systems, an older-generation 5-qubit quantum processing unit (IBMQ Belem), when combined with optimized Twirled Readout Error Extinction (T-REx), achieves ground-state energy estimations an order of magnitude more accurate than those obtained from a more advanced 156-qubit device (IBM Fez) without error mitigation. Our findings demonstrate that T-REx, a computationally inexpensive error mitigation technique, substantially improves VQE accuracy not only in energy estimation, but more importantly in optimizing the variational parameters that characterize the molecular ground state. Consequently, state-vector simulated energies suggest that the accuracy of the optimized variational parameters provides a more reliable benchmark of VQE performance than quantum hardware energy estimates alone. Our results point to the critical role of error mitigation in extending the utility of noisy quantum hardware for molecular simulations.
Quantum computing, leveraging the principles of superposition and entanglement, holds the potential to revolutionize computational problem-solving across a wide array of fields, from cryptography to complex system simulations. However, unlocking the full power of quantum computing requires the development of advanced quantum compilation techniques that can efficiently map high-level algorithms onto physical quantum hardware. This paper delves into state-of-the-art optimization strategies within quantum compilers, with a particular focus on methods such as Relaxed Peephole Optimization (RPO), gate reordering techniques for the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), and reinforcement learning (RL)-driven frameworks. It also explores innovative approaches like distributed quantum compilation, parity quantum optimization, and the Paulihedral framework, all designed to minimize gate counts, reduce circuit depth, and optimize overall resource utilization. A key contribution of this work is the introduction of error mitigation techniques that enhance the fidelity and scalability of quantum circuits, particularly on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. Through comprehensive empirical evaluations across a variety of quantum algorithms, the paper demonstrates significant improvements in critical performance metrics such as circuit depth, gate count, and execution efficiency, providing a promising direction for optimizing quantum circuit design tailored to diverse quantum hardware platforms.