It is well known that simulating quantum circuits with low but nonzero hardware noise is more difficult than without noise. It requires either to perform density matrix simulations (coming with a space overhead) or to sample over “quantum trajectories” where Kraus operators are inserted randomly (coming with a runtime overhead). We propose a simulation technique based on a representation of hardware noise in terms of trajectories generated by operators that remain close to identity at low noise. We give explicit expressions for noise that can be represented by Pauli channels, as well as for certain non-Pauli channels. This representation significantly reduces the variance over the quantum trajectories, speeding up noisy simulations by factors around 10 to 100. As a by-product, we provide a formula to factorize generic Pauli channels into a concatenation of channels involving only one nontrivial Pauli string.
It is well known that simulating quantum circuits with low but nonzero hardware noise is more difficult than without noise. It requires either to perform density matrix simulations (coming with a space overhead) or to sample over “quantum trajectories” where Kraus operators are inserted randomly (coming with a runtime overhead). We propose a simulation technique based on a representation of hardware noise in terms of trajectories generated by operators that remain close to identity at low noise. We give explicit expressions for noise that can be represented by Pauli channels, as well as for certain non-Pauli channels. This representation significantly reduces the variance over the quantum trajectories, speeding up noisy simulations by factors around 10 to 100. As a by-product, we provide a formula to factorize generic Pauli channels into a concatenation of channels involving only one nontrivial Pauli string.
As quantum devices grow in size while remaining affected by noise, a key challenge is to determine when and how they can surpass classical computation on practical tasks. This requires the development of highly efficient classical simulation algorithms. Pauli backpropagation algorithms are among the most promising, having shown efficiency in simulating certain classes of parameterized quantum circuits, strong candidates for near‑term quantum advantage, under random circuit assumptions and depolarizing noise. However, their efficiency had not been demonstrated for more realistic nonunital noise models, such as amplitude damping, which better capture the behaviour of current hardware. We close this gap by adapting Pauli backpropagation to most single‑qubit noise channels, including nonunital noise, and proving that it remains efficient under these conditions. Our algorithm is parallelizable, memory‑efficient, and requires no assumptions on the locality of the observable, the geometry of the hardware, or the depth of the circuit. While hardware noise can strongly affect computational power in highly structured, fault‑tolerant circuits, our findings indicate little difference for most near‑term variational architectures. This establishes Pauli backpropagation as an efficient method for simulating noisy quantum devices under realistic noise assumptions.While these advances improve our ability to reproduce noisy expectation values of observables, many practical applications, including combinatorial optimization, require direct access to the bitstrings output by quantum circuits, as these encode candidate solutions. Classical replication of such noisy samples has so far been limited beyond the random circuit setting. To bridge this gap, we first focus on problems whose objective functions depend only on two‑body correlations, such as Max‑Cut, and apply Gaussian randomized rounding to the circuit's two‑qubit marginals. This produces classical samples whose expected cost is provably close to that of the noisy quantum device. Large‑scale simulations and experiments on IBMQ hardware confirm that the rounded samples reproduce the full energy distribution, with similar behaviour under various noise models. Coupled with Pauli backpropagation for efficiently estimating noisy marginals, this yields an end‑to‑end classical sampler operating in polynomial time for a broad class of variational circuits. Our results therefore show that sufficiently noisy quantum circuits for combinatorial optimization can be sampled from classically, clarifying where near‑term hardware may or may not outperform classical algorithms.Finally , we go beyond one and two‑body marginals and present an algorithm that samples valid bitstrings directly from a maximum‑entropy distribution matching the given expectation values of the quantum circuit. This method does not rely on the locality or sparsity of the problem's Hamiltonian and performs well across a variety of quantum circuits, including deep circuits on many qubits. When combined with Pauli propagation or error mitigation, it provides a practical pipeline for obtaining samples from quantum circuits in the near term, where full error correction might not yet be available.
Simulating open quantum systems on digital quantum computers typically relies on the use of auxiliary qubits, resulting in overheads of noisy multi-qubit gates, that severely limit execution on near-term hardware. In this work, we explore the simulation of non-Markovian dynamics as well as memory channels leveraging the method of trajectory mixing, valid for mixed unitary channels. This allows to drastically reduce circuit depth, trading entangling gates for a statistical mixture of independent, pure state trajectories. Using a realistic noise model calibrated to modern quantum processors, we show the benefits of this approach, yielding higher state fidelity and better preservation of quantum correlations. This shows the possibility of simulating long-time non-Markovian evolutions with low noise and limited resources.
Classical simulation of noisy quantum circuits is essential for validating algorithms, benchmarking hardware, and assessing error-mitigation strategies, but remains limited by the exponential cost of density-matrix methods and the high variance of standard trajectory sampling. We introduce a variance-aware tensor network framework that combines the tensor jump method with local TDVP gate evolution on matrix product states and sparse Pauli-Lindblad hardware noise models. Gates are applied as short variational evolutions on the MPS manifold, while noise is sampled per circuit window from Pauli-Lindblad jump sets with state-independent hazards and dissipative contractions that reduce to irrelevant global factors after renormalization. The method supports correlated multi-qubit Lindblad noise consistent with hardware connectivity, including long-range operators on non-adjacent qubits, enabling direct simulation of crosstalk and other connectivity-induced errors beyond local noise models. We develop two unbiased variance-aware unravelings. An analog unitary-mixture unraveling matches the Lindblad generator exactly under symmetric Gaussian or two-point angle laws, while a projector-jump unraveling yields state-independent hazards and closed-form variance laws. Both retain the standard 1/sqrt(N) Monte Carlo convergence but with reduced prefactors. Empirically, projector sampling strongly reduces trajectory variance and bond-dimension growth across many circuit architectures, whereas analog sampling is most effective at weak noise. We demonstrate accurate, scalable noisy-circuit simulation on a 25-qubit noisy XY quench and IBM's 127-qubit kicked-Ising benchmark with long-range depolarizing noise, achieving reduced Monte Carlo variance and favorable MPS bond-dimension growth compared with standard Kraus-insertion baselines.
Classical simulation of noisy quantum circuits is essential for validating algorithms, bench-marking hardware, and guiding error-mitigation strategies. Yet it remains challenging due to either the exponential memory footprint of density matrix methods or the high variance in trajectories of standard Kraus-insertion approaches. We introduce a variance aware tensor network framework that unifies the tensor jump method (TJM) with a local time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) and a sparse Pauli-Lindblad model (SPLM) of hardware noise. Gates are realized as short variational evolutions on the matrix product state (MPS) manifold, while noise is applied stochastically per circuit window using Pauli-Lindblad jump sets that render the sampling hazard state-independent and the dissipative contraction trivial after renormalization. Strikingly, our method supports arbitrary Lindblad correlated multi-qubit noise channels consistent with hardware connectivity, including long-range noise operators on non-adjacent subsets, enabling direct simulation of crosstalk and other connectivity-induced errors beyond local noise models. Building on prior work that introduced analog unitary unravelings, we adapt this scheme to a framework based on the Lindblad master equation with exact generator matching under discretized angle laws and a parameter choice. This exactly matches the Lindblad generator, while selecting Gaussian or two-point angle laws. In parallel, we introduce an MPS-projector-jump unraveling that yields state-independent hazards and closed-form variance laws. Both schemes are unbiased and inherit the standard 1/√N Monte Carlo convergence, but with substantially smaller constants due to variance reduction. Empirically, projector sampling markedly reduces the required bond dimension per trajectory across many circuit architectures, while analog sampling excels at low noise. We demonstrate accurate, scalable noisy-circuit simulation on a 25-qubit noisy XY quench and IBM’s 127-qubit kicked Ising benchmark with long-range depolarizing noise, achieving substantially reduced Monte Carlo variance and favorable bond dimension growth compared to standard Kraus insertion baselines.
The quantum-trajectory description of a noisy quantum circuit is not unique: every Kraus representation of the noise channel defines a different unraveling, i.e., a different ensemble of pure states that averages to the same density matrix. While all unravelings share the same expectation values of observables, they generally differ in the amount of quantum resources carried by the individual trajectories. Here we study non-stabilizerness, or magic, quantified by the stabilizer Rényi entropy, in quantum-trajectory unravelings of Haar-random and T-doped random Clifford brickwork circuits subject to local dephasing noise of strength p. The canonical unraveling in terms of Pauli jumps is Clifford and leaves magic untouched, so that trajectories retain the Haar-random value of non-stabilizerness. Exploring the full two-parameter family of minimal unravelings, we find that the trajectory-averaged magic can be substantially reduced by a state-independent choice of Kraus operators, and that the optimal choice is not in general the projective-measurement unraveling, but a two-outcome generalized measurement in which the Kraus operators correspond to a weak measurement of the noisy qubit. The optimal unraveling reduces the extensive magic density of the trajectories by a p-dependent factor without altering its linear scaling with system size. At the same time, it produces a very broad distribution of magic over trajectories, with a sizable fraction of trajectories retaining Haar-random magic. Since the cost of stabilizer-based classical simulation grows exponentially with the magic of the state, these high-magic trajectories, rather than the average, control the simulation cost. Our results delineate the potential and the limitations of unraveling optimization as a route to the classical simulation of noisy quantum dynamics with stabilizer methods.
Accurately estimating observables on noisy quantum devices remains a central challenge for near-term quantum algorithms. While quantum error mitigation techniques can reduce noise-induced bias, they often rely on unverifiable assumptions about the circuit noise, and cannot guarantee the magnitude of residual bias error. Here, rather than using classical resources to mitigate a noisy quantum circuit execution, we propose a hybrid algorithm that uses quantum resources to improve the accuracy of approximate classical Pauli-path simulation. Our protocol, Quantum Enhanced Pauli Propagation (QuEPP), uses Clifford perturbation theory (CPT) to construct a classically simulable ensemble of Clifford circuits from the low-order terms in CPT, which directly provide the approximate classical Pauli-path simulation of the target circuit. Noisy quantum expectation values of this ensemble are then used to infer a global rescaling factor that corrects quantum execution of the target circuit, providing higher-order contributions absent from the truncated low-order classical simulation. This approach requires no noise characterization, applies to arbitrary circuits, and provides a provable route to asymptotically unbiased estimates. Using IBM Heron hardware, we demonstrate QuEPP on 2D random mirror circuits of up to 49 qubits and circuit depth 80, as well as Trotterized Hamiltonian evolution, showing consistent improvements beyond classical CPT and unmitigated quantum results. QuEPP offers a simple, scalable, and model-free framework for enabling accurate quantum computation in the pre-fault-tolerant era.