Tasks involving black boxes appear frequently in the theory of quantum information, with quantum channel discrimination as a central example that has been deeply studied. In this work, we experimentally study the discrimination between two unitary quantum channels in the multiple-shot scenario. We challenge the theoretical results concerning the probability of correct discrimination with the results collected from experiments performed on the IBM Brisbane. Our analysis shows that neither too deep quantum circuits nor circuits that create too much entanglement are suitable for the discrimination task. We conclude that circuit architectures which minimize entanglement overhead while preserving discrimination power are significantly more resilient to hardware noise if their depth does not exceed a threshold value. Consequently, our findings necessitate a paradigm shift: for execution on noisy hardware, the theoretically suboptimal circuit is, counterintuitively, often the superior choice.
Tasks involving black boxes appear frequently in the theory of quantum information, with quantum channel discrimination as a central example that has been deeply studied. In this work, we experimentally study the discrimination between two unitary quantum channels in the multiple-shot scenario. We challenge the theoretical results concerning the probability of correct discrimination with the results collected from experiments performed on the IBM Brisbane. Our analysis shows that neither too deep quantum circuits nor circuits that create too much entanglement are suitable for the discrimination task. We conclude that circuit architectures which minimize entanglement overhead while preserving discrimination power are significantly more resilient to hardware noise if their depth does not exceed a threshold value. Consequently, our findings necessitate a paradigm shift: for execution on noisy hardware, the theoretically suboptimal circuit is, counterintuitively, often the superior choice.
Entanglement is known to be a powerful resource that improves performance in various quantum information and computational tasks. A standard example of such a phenomenon is the possibility of perfectly discriminating all four Pauli operations in a single shot via the superdense coding protocol. While entanglement is often a powerful resource for quantum channel discrimination, this is not necessarily the case. In this work, we identify scenarios in which the maximally entangled state is a bad choice of input state and, more generally, show that excessive entanglement can reduce channel discriminability dramatically. To do so, we present an explicit pair of unitary channels which are perfectly discriminable without entanglement, but for which any strategy with maximally entangled input states is ε-close to a blind uniform guessing strategy. To develop a systematic approach, we introduce the concepts of Maximal Entanglement Worst Case (MEWC) and Maximal Entanglement Best Case (MEBC) pairs of channels, and present conditions for a pair of channels to be MEWC or MEBC. With these conditions, we show that the optimal input states for discriminating MEWC pairs of channels are necessarily separable, and provide non-trivial examples of measurement channels for which entanglement necessarily reduces the maximum probability of discrimination.
This repository contains the experimental and analytical materialsassociated with the manuscript: “Discrete Depth Stabilization in Noisy Quantum Hardware:An Information-Theoretic Study Using Fixed-Shot Phase-Lock Circuits” The study reports experimental evidence from superconducting quantum hardwareshowing non-monotonic performance as a function of circuit depth underfixed-shot constraints. In particular, discrete depth regimes are identifiedin which phase discrimination efficiency remains high despite increasedhardware noise exposure. All experiments were performed on publicly accessible IBM Quantum hardware.Due to the stochastic and time-dependent nature of quantum device noise,exact numerical reproduction is not expected; however, all circuitconstructions and analysis procedures are fully documented ---[Revision Note for v2.0 (September 2026)]- Clarified notation between circuit repetition steps (N_step in [1, 41]) and total physical gate depth (N = 2 * N_step in [2, 82]).- Harmonized figure captions with physical depth metrics to prevent ambiguity. quantum computingNISQquantum noisecircuit depthphase estimationinformation theoryIBM Quantum
Among the intriguing features of quantum theory, the problem of distinguishing quantum channels is of fundamental interest. In this paper, we focus on the single-shot discrimination of two noisy quantum channels using two distinct classes of probes: single-system (product) probes and entangled probes. Our aim is to identify optimal probing state for specific discrimination tasks and to analyze the necessity and role of entanglement in enhancing channel distinguishability. We show that maximally entangled probes are optimal for discriminating two qubit depolarizing channels, with any nonzero entanglement providing an advantage over single-system probes. In contrast, for dephasing channels in arbitrary dimensions, we prove that single-system probe can be optimal and that entanglement offers no improvement, even when the dephasing unitary is generalized. For qubit amplitude-damping channels, we identify distinct noise-dependent regimes in which either single-system probe outperforms maximally entangled probes and vice-versa. Moreover, we demonstrate that non-maximally entangled probes can act as the optimum probe if the noise parameters restricted to certain values in this task. We also present examples of noisy unitary channels for which discrimination is possible using non-maximally entangled probe, while both single-systems and maximally entangled probes fail. We introduce another class of noisy unitary channels for which perfect discrimination is achievable with a single system, while maximally entangled probes are insufficient. Finally, we show that two erasure channels can be optimally discriminated using any pure single-system probe, with no advantage gained from entanglement.
We experimentally study error mitigation and finite-shot sampling on superconducting quantum hardware under a constrained execution budget. The study combines calibration-aware qubit selection, circuit-depth scaling, zero-noise extrapolation, dynamical decoupling, readout-error mitigation, and repeated-shot estimation on an IBM Quantum processor. Experiments are organized across ideal simulation, noise-model simulation, and physical-device execution to separate sampling uncertainty from device-induced error. We investigate how mitigation performance changes with circuit depth, effective noise scale, qubit connectivity, and measurement budget, and quantify accuracy using expectation-value error, mean-squared error, statistical uncertainty, and mitigation gain. A fixed hardware-execution budget is used to evaluate shot allocation strategies and repeated measurements without relying on unlimited sampling. The resulting analysis provides a hardware-aware characterization of when mitigation improves expectation-value estimation and when finite-shot fluctuations offset the benefit of additional mitigation overhead. The implementation uses contemporary Qiskit and IBM Quantum Runtime workflows and is designed to provide reproducible experimental evidence for error-mitigation studies on current quantum processors.
Dynamics of many-qubit systems, that may correspond to computational processing with quantum systems, can be efficiently and generally approximated by a sequence of two- and single-qubit gates. In practical applications, however, a quantum gate prepared as a unitary transformation may appear as a noisy channel and consequently may inhibit quantum advantages. In this work, we apply the scheme of channel discrimination to detect if a quantum gate that is actually realized is unitary or noisy. We show that a two-qubit unitary transformation and its noisy counterpart can be optimally discriminated by local resources, without the necessity of creating entanglement repeatedly. It is also shown that the scheme can be applied to estimation of the fraction of noise existing in quantum gates.
Quantum hypothesis testing is a central task in the entire field of quantum information theory. Understanding its ultimate limits will give insight into a wide range of quantum protocols and applications, from sensing to communication. Although the limits of hypothesis testing between quantum states have been completely clarified by the pioneering works of Helstrom in the 1970s, the more difficult problem of hypothesis testing with quantum channels, i.e., channel discrimination, is less understood. This is mainly due to the complications coming from the use of input entanglement and the possibility of employing adaptive strategies. In this Letter, we establish a lower limit for the ultimate error probability affecting the discrimination of an arbitrary number of quantum channels. We also show that this lower bound is achievable when the channels have certain symmetries. As an example, we apply our results to the problem of channel position finding, where the goal is to identify the location of a target channel among multiple background channels. In this general setting, we find that the use of entanglement offers a great advantage over strategies without entanglement, with nontrivial implications for data readout, target detection, and quantum spectroscopy.