Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2410.21125 · Physical Review A

Stabilizer configuration interaction: Finding molecular subspaces with error detection properties

Abhinav Anand, Kenneth R. Brown

Published Aug 21, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this work, we explore a new approach to designing both algorithms and error detection codes for preparing approximate ground states of molecules. We propose a classical algorithm to find the optimal stabilizer state by using excitations of the Hartree-Fock state, followed by constructing quantum error-detection codes based on this stabilizer state using codeword-stabilized codes. Through various numerical experiments, we confirm that our method finds the best stabilizer approximations to the true ground states of molecules up to 36 qubits in size. Additionally, we construct generalized stabilizer states that offer a better approximation to the true ground states. Furthermore, for a simple noise model, we demonstrate that both the stabilizer and (some) generalized stabilizer states can be prepared with higher fidelity using the error-detection codes we construct. Our work represents a promising step toward designing algorithms for early fault-tolerant quantum computation.

DOI
10.1103/jkcp-6km5

Related papers

Codeword Stabilized Quantum Codes and Their Error Correction

Yunfan Li

Quantum decoherence and errors represent some of the major challenges arising in quantum computations. Quantum error correcting codes protect quantum states against these errors and make quantum computing more reliable. One of the main problems of quantum error correction is the design of feasible decoding algorithms that can simplify error-correction for general quantum codes. The dissertation addresses decoding of general Codeword Stabilized (CWS) codes. This class of quantum codes also includes some other important classes such as additive Stabilizer codes and non-additive Union Stabilizer (USt) codes.We first design a generic error-correcting algorithm for CWS codes and analyze the number of decoding measurements and quantum gates. This algorithm performs exhaustive screening of different error patterns, similar to decoding of classical non-linear codes. For an n-qubit quantum code correcting up to t erroneous qubits, this brute-force approach consecutively tests all correctable error patterns and employs a separate n-qubit measurement in each test.The main result is a new error grouping technique that enables simultaneous testing of large groups of errors in a single measurement. To achieve this reduction, we first proceed with a new error-correction algorithm for the USt codes. Secondly, we design an algorithm that converts generic non-linear CWS codes into the simpler quasi-linear USt codes. Each decoding measurement can then either locate the actual error in a given group of errors or entirely eliminate this group. This technique yields a much simpler algorithm that exponentially reduces the number of measurements about 3^t times in any t-error-correcting CWS code.

•Jan 1, 2010•0 citations

Quantum-selected configuration interaction: Classical diagonalization of Hamiltonians in subspaces selected by quantum computers

Keita Kanno, Masaya Kohda, Ryosuke Imai +4 more

We propose quantum-selected configuration interaction, a class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for calculating the ground- and excited-state energies of many-electron Hamiltonians on noisy quantum devices. Suppose that an approximate ground state can be prepared on a quantum computer either by variational quantum eigensolver or by some other method. Then, by sampling the state in the computational basis, which is hard for classical computation in general, one can identify the electron configurations that are important for reproducing the ground state. The Hamiltonian in the subspace spanned by those important configurations is diagonalized on classical computers to output the ground-state energy and the corresponding eigenvector. The excited-state energies can be obtained similarly. The result is robust against statistical and physical errors because the noisy quantum devices are used only to define the subspace, and the resulting ground-state energy strictly satisfies the variational principle even in the presence of such errors. The expectation values of various other operators can also be estimated for obtained eigenstates with no additional quantum cost, since the explicit eigenvectors in the subspaces are known. We verified our proposal by numerical simulations and demonstrated it on a quantum device for an eight-qubit molecular Hamiltonian. The proposed algorithms are potentially feasible to tackle some challenging molecules by exploiting quantum devices with several tens of qubits, assisted by high-performance classical computing resources for diagonalization.

arXiv:2302.11320•Physical Review Research•May 9, 2026•25 citations

Lower overhead fault-tolerant building blocks for noisy quantum computers

Prithviraj Prabhu

Quantum computation holds the promise of solving certain complex problems exponentially faster than classical computers. However, the high prevalent noise in current quantum devices impedes the accurate execution of even basic algorithms. This can be remedied by protecting quantum information with a quantum error-correcting code, where the logical information of an algorithmic qubit is spread across multiple physical qubits. Individual quantum errors are then located and corrected by the fault-tolerant measurement of multi-qubit stabilizer operators (parity checks). Unfortunately, error correction and fault tolerance both impose large demands on the qubit overhead: hundreds to thousands of physical qubits per logical qubit. We reduce the spacetime cost of fault tolerance by redesigning key building blocks of an error-corrected quantum computer. First, we develop a combinatorial proof with flag fault tolerance that exponentially reduces the extra qubits needed to measure a stabilizer of any size, while tolerating one fault. We leverage these proofs to then design state preparation circuits for the Steane and Golay codes with 100% yield. Next, we improve error correction on a planar layout by showing that a distance-four code encoding six logical qubits protects information as well as the distance-five surface code, using one-tenth as many physical qubits. Finally, we optimize the time overhead of logical gates in surface code quantum computers by protecting measurement results with a classical code, cutting computation time by a factor of two to six. Our hardware-agnostic optimizations of fault tolerance overheads thus suggest new routes to advance the timeline of error-free quantum computing.

quant-pharXiv:2605.12385•May 13, 2026•0 citations

Automated Synthesis of Fault-Tolerant State Preparation Circuits for Quantum Error Correction Codes

Tom Peham, L. Schmid, Lucas Berent +2 more

A central ingredient in fault-tolerant quantum algorithms is the initialization of a logical state for a given quantum error-correcting code from a set of noisy qubits. A scheme that has demonstrated promising results for small code instances that are realizable on currently available hardware composes a non-fault-tolerant state preparation step with a verification step that checks for spreading errors. Known circuit constructions of this scheme are mostly obtained manually, and no algorithmic techniques for constructing depth- or gate-optimal circuits exist. As a consequence, the current state of the art exploits this scheme only for specific code instances and mostly for the special case of distance 3 codes. In this work, we propose an automated approach for synthesizing fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for arbitrary CSS codes. We utilize methods based on satisfiability solving (SAT) techniques to construct fault-tolerant state preparation circuits consisting of depth- and gate-optimal preparation and verification circuits. We also provide heuristics that can synthesize fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for code instances where no optimal solution can be obtained in an adequate timeframe. Moreover, we give a general construction for non-deterministic state preparation circuits beyond distance 3. Numerical evaluations using $d=3$ and $d=5$ codes confirm that the generated circuits exhibit the desired scaling of the logical error rates. The resulting methods are publicly available as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT) at https://github.com/cda-tum/mqt-qecc. Such methods are an important step in providing fault-tolerant circuit constructions that can aid in near-term demonstration of fault-tolerant quantum computing.

arXiv:2408.11894•Aug 21, 2024•0 citations

The stabilizer ground state and applications to quantum simulation

Yuping Mao, Chang Chen, Jiaxing Feng +2 more

The stabilizer ground state is defined is the lowest energy stabilizer state with respect to a given Hamiltonian. In many cases it is highly degenerate and does not give a unique stabilizer state. We define the optimal stabilizer ground state as the stabilizer ground state which has the highest fidelity with the true ground state. This is useful in quantum simulation contexts as it allows for a Clifford circuit approximation of a ground state that can be further refined towards the true ground state. We show how the optimal stabilizer ground state may be evaluated. We show applications of this state in the context of measurement-based deterministic imaginary time evolution (MITE), which converges to the ground state with high efficiency. By classically selecting the optimal stabilizer generator group and employing the stabilizer tableaux formalism, the method prepares the corresponding stabilizer ground state with maximal fidelity. The identification and refinement of this generator group are performed using a genetic algorithm tailored to the structure of the target Hamiltonian. The complexity analysis further demonstrates that algorithm's quantum resource cost scales polynomially with system size, highlighting its high efficiency and potential quantum advantage.

quant-pharXiv:2603.06286•Mar 9, 2026•0 citations

New construction of quantum error-avoiding codes via group representation of quantum stabilizer codes

Hailin Xiao, Zhongshan Zhang, Anthony Theodore Chronopoulos

In quantum computing, nice error bases as generalization of the Pauli basis were introduced by Knill. These bases are known to be projective representations of finite groups. In this paper, we propose a group representation approach to the study of quantum stabilizer codes. We utilize this approach to define decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs). Unlike previous studies of DFSs, this type of DFSs does not involve any spatial symmetry assumptions on the system-environment interaction. Thus, it can be used to construct quantum error-avoiding codes (QEACs) that are fault tolerant automatically. We also propose a new simple construction of QEACs and subsequently develop several classes of QEACs. Finally, we present numerical simulation results encoding the logical error rate over physical error rate on the fidelity performance of these QEACs. Our study demonstrates that DFSs-based QEACs are capable of providing a generalized and unified framework for error-avoiding methods.

The European Physical Journal C•Oct 1, 2017•5 citations
In this work, we explore a new approach to designing both algorithms and error detection codes for preparing approximate ground states of molecules. We propose a classical algorithm to find the optimal stabilizer state by using excitations of the Hartree-Fock state, followed by constructing quantum error-detection codes based on this stabilizer state using codeword-stabilized codes. Through various numerical experiments, we confirm that our method finds the best stabilizer approximations to the true ground states of molecules up to 36 qubits in size. Additionally, we construct generalized stabilizer states that offer a better approximation to the true ground states. Furthermore, for a simple noise model, we demonstrate that both the stabilizer and (some) generalized stabilizer states can be prepared with higher fidelity using the error-detection codes we construct. Our work represents a promising step toward designing algorithms for early fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Quantum decoherence and errors represent some of the major challenges arising in quantum computations. Quantum error correcting codes protect quantum states against these errors and make quantum computing more reliable. One of the main problems of quantum error correction is the design of feasible decoding algorithms that can simplify error-correction for general quantum codes. The dissertation addresses decoding of general Codeword Stabilized (CWS) codes. This class of quantum codes also includes some other important classes such as additive Stabilizer codes and non-additive Union Stabilizer (USt) codes.We first design a generic error-correcting algorithm for CWS codes and analyze the number of decoding measurements and quantum gates. This algorithm performs exhaustive screening of different error patterns, similar to decoding of classical non-linear codes. For an n-qubit quantum code correcting up to t erroneous qubits, this brute-force approach consecutively tests all correctable error patterns and employs a separate n-qubit measurement in each test.The main result is a new error grouping technique that enables simultaneous testing of large groups of errors in a single measurement. To achieve this reduction, we first proceed with a new error-correction algorithm for the USt codes. Secondly, we design an algorithm that converts generic non-linear CWS codes into the simpler quasi-linear USt codes. Each decoding measurement can then either locate the actual error in a given group of errors or entirely eliminate this group. This technique yields a much simpler algorithm that exponentially reduces the number of measurements about 3^t times in any t-error-correcting CWS code.
We propose quantum-selected configuration interaction, a class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for calculating the ground- and excited-state energies of many-electron Hamiltonians on noisy quantum devices. Suppose that an approximate ground state can be prepared on a quantum computer either by variational quantum eigensolver or by some other method. Then, by sampling the state in the computational basis, which is hard for classical computation in general, one can identify the electron configurations that are important for reproducing the ground state. The Hamiltonian in the subspace spanned by those important configurations is diagonalized on classical computers to output the ground-state energy and the corresponding eigenvector. The excited-state energies can be obtained similarly. The result is robust against statistical and physical errors because the noisy quantum devices are used only to define the subspace, and the resulting ground-state energy strictly satisfies the variational principle even in the presence of such errors. The expectation values of various other operators can also be estimated for obtained eigenstates with no additional quantum cost, since the explicit eigenvectors in the subspaces are known. We verified our proposal by numerical simulations and demonstrated it on a quantum device for an eight-qubit molecular Hamiltonian. The proposed algorithms are potentially feasible to tackle some challenging molecules by exploiting quantum devices with several tens of qubits, assisted by high-performance classical computing resources for diagonalization.
Quantum computation holds the promise of solving certain complex problems exponentially faster than classical computers. However, the high prevalent noise in current quantum devices impedes the accurate execution of even basic algorithms. This can be remedied by protecting quantum information with a quantum error-correcting code, where the logical information of an algorithmic qubit is spread across multiple physical qubits. Individual quantum errors are then located and corrected by the fault-tolerant measurement of multi-qubit stabilizer operators (parity checks). Unfortunately, error correction and fault tolerance both impose large demands on the qubit overhead: hundreds to thousands of physical qubits per logical qubit. We reduce the spacetime cost of fault tolerance by redesigning key building blocks of an error-corrected quantum computer. First, we develop a combinatorial proof with flag fault tolerance that exponentially reduces the extra qubits needed to measure a stabilizer of any size, while tolerating one fault. We leverage these proofs to then design state preparation circuits for the Steane and Golay codes with 100% yield. Next, we improve error correction on a planar layout by showing that a distance-four code encoding six logical qubits protects information as well as the distance-five surface code, using one-tenth as many physical qubits. Finally, we optimize the time overhead of logical gates in surface code quantum computers by protecting measurement results with a classical code, cutting computation time by a factor of two to six. Our hardware-agnostic optimizations of fault tolerance overheads thus suggest new routes to advance the timeline of error-free quantum computing.
A central ingredient in fault-tolerant quantum algorithms is the initialization of a logical state for a given quantum error-correcting code from a set of noisy qubits. A scheme that has demonstrated promising results for small code instances that are realizable on currently available hardware composes a non-fault-tolerant state preparation step with a verification step that checks for spreading errors. Known circuit constructions of this scheme are mostly obtained manually, and no algorithmic techniques for constructing depth- or gate-optimal circuits exist. As a consequence, the current state of the art exploits this scheme only for specific code instances and mostly for the special case of distance 3 codes. In this work, we propose an automated approach for synthesizing fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for arbitrary CSS codes. We utilize methods based on satisfiability solving (SAT) techniques to construct fault-tolerant state preparation circuits consisting of depth- and gate-optimal preparation and verification circuits. We also provide heuristics that can synthesize fault-tolerant state preparation circuits for code instances where no optimal solution can be obtained in an adequate timeframe. Moreover, we give a general construction for non-deterministic state preparation circuits beyond distance 3. Numerical evaluations using d=3d=3d=3 and d=5d=5d=5 codes confirm that the generated circuits exhibit the desired scaling of the logical error rates. The resulting methods are publicly available as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT) at https://github.com/cda-tum/mqt-qecc. Such methods are an important step in providing fault-tolerant circuit constructions that can aid in near-term demonstration of fault-tolerant quantum computing.
The stabilizer ground state is defined is the lowest energy stabilizer state with respect to a given Hamiltonian. In many cases it is highly degenerate and does not give a unique stabilizer state. We define the optimal stabilizer ground state as the stabilizer ground state which has the highest fidelity with the true ground state. This is useful in quantum simulation contexts as it allows for a Clifford circuit approximation of a ground state that can be further refined towards the true ground state. We show how the optimal stabilizer ground state may be evaluated. We show applications of this state in the context of measurement-based deterministic imaginary time evolution (MITE), which converges to the ground state with high efficiency. By classically selecting the optimal stabilizer generator group and employing the stabilizer tableaux formalism, the method prepares the corresponding stabilizer ground state with maximal fidelity. The identification and refinement of this generator group are performed using a genetic algorithm tailored to the structure of the target Hamiltonian. The complexity analysis further demonstrates that algorithm's quantum resource cost scales polynomially with system size, highlighting its high efficiency and potential quantum advantage.
In quantum computing, nice error bases as generalization of the Pauli basis were introduced by Knill. These bases are known to be projective representations of finite groups. In this paper, we propose a group representation approach to the study of quantum stabilizer codes. We utilize this approach to define decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs). Unlike previous studies of DFSs, this type of DFSs does not involve any spatial symmetry assumptions on the system-environment interaction. Thus, it can be used to construct quantum error-avoiding codes (QEACs) that are fault tolerant automatically. We also propose a new simple construction of QEACs and subsequently develop several classes of QEACs. Finally, we present numerical simulation results encoding the logical error rate over physical error rate on the fidelity performance of these QEACs. Our study demonstrates that DFSs-based QEACs are capable of providing a generalized and unified framework for error-avoiding methods.