Quantum computing has significantly advanced in recent years, boasting devices with hundreds of quantum bits (qubits), hinting at its potential quantum advantage over classical computing. Yet, noise in quantum devices poses significant barriers to realizing this supremacy. Understanding noise’s impact is crucial for reproducibility and application reuse; moreover, the next-generation quantum-centric supercomputing essentially requires efficient and accurate noise characterization to support system management (e.g., job scheduling), where ensuring correct functional performance (i.e., fidelity) of jobs on available quantum devices can even be higher-priority than traditional objectives. However, noise fluctuates over time, even on the same quantum device, which makes predicting the computational bounds for on-the-fly noise is vital. Noisy quantum simulation can offer insights but faces efficiency and scalability issues. In this work, we propose a data-driven workflow, namely QuBound, to predict computational performance bounds. It decomposes historical performance traces to isolate noise sources and devises a novel encoder to embed circuit and noise information processed by a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. For evaluation, we compare QuBound with a state-of-the-art learning-based predictor, which only generates a single performance value instead of a bound. Experimental results show that the result of the existing approach falls outside of performance bounds, while all predictions from our QuBound with the assistance of performance decomposition better fit the bounds. Moreover, QuBound can efficiently produce practical bounds for various circuits with over 106 speedup over simulation; in addition, the range from QuBound is over 10× narrower than the state-of-the-art analytical approach.
Quantum computing has significantly advanced in recent years, boasting devices with hundreds of quantum bits (qubits), hinting at its potential quantum advantage over classical computing. Yet, noise in quantum devices poses significant barriers to realizing this supremacy. Understanding noise’s impact is crucial for reproducibility and application reuse; moreover, the next-generation quantum-centric supercomputing essentially requires efficient and accurate noise characterization to support system management (e.g., job scheduling), where ensuring correct functional performance (i.e., fidelity) of jobs on available quantum devices can even be higher-priority than traditional objectives. However, noise fluctuates over time, even on the same quantum device, which makes predicting the computational bounds for on-the-fly noise is vital. Noisy quantum simulation can offer insights but faces efficiency and scalability issues. In this work, we propose a data-driven workflow, namely QuBound, to predict computational performance bounds. It decomposes historical performance traces to isolate noise sources and devises a novel encoder to embed circuit and noise information processed by a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. For evaluation, we compare QuBound with a state-of-the-art learning-based predictor, which only generates a single performance value instead of a bound. Experimental results show that the result of the existing approach falls outside of performance bounds, while all predictions from our QuBound with the assistance of performance decomposition better fit the bounds. Moreover, QuBound can efficiently produce practical bounds for various circuits with over 106 speedup over simulation; in addition, the range from QuBound is over 10× narrower than the state-of-the-art analytical approach.
In the Quantum Supremacy regime, quantum computers may overcome classical machines on several tasks if we can estimate, mitigate, or correct unavoidable hardware noise. Estimating the error requires classical simulations, which become unfeasible in the Quantum Supremacy regime. We leverage Machine Learning data-driven approaches and Conformal Prediction, a Machine Learning uncertainty quantification tool known for its mild assumptions and finite-sample validity, to find theoretically valid upper bounds of the fidelity between noiseless and noisy outputs of quantum devices. Under reasonable extrapolation assumptions, the proposed scheme applies to any Quantum Computing hardware, does not require modeling the device's noise sources, and can be used when classical simulations are unavailable, e.g. in the Quantum Supremacy regime.
Quantum computation promises to advance a wide range of computational tasks. However, current quantum hardware suffers from noise and is too small for error correction. Thus, accurately utilizing noisy quantum computers strongly relies on noise characterization, mitigation, and suppression. Crucially, these methods must also be efficient in terms of their classical and quantum overhead. Here, we efficiently characterize and mitigate crosstalk noise, which is a severe error source in, for example, cross-resonance based superconducting quantum processors. For crosstalk characterization, we develop a simplified measurement experiment. Furthermore, we analyze the problem of optimal experiment scheduling and solve it for common hardware architectures. After characterization, we mitigate noise in quantum circuits by a noise-aware qubit routing algorithm. Our integer programming algorithm extends previous work on optimized qubit routing by swap insertion. We incorporate the measured crosstalk errors in addition to other, more easily accessible noise data in the objective function. Furthermore, we strengthen the underlying integer linear model by proving a convex hull result about an associated class of polytopes, which has applications beyond this work. We evaluate the proposed method by characterizing crosstalk noise for two chips with up to 127 qubits and leverage the resulting data to improve the approximation ratio of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm by up to 10% compared with other established noise-aware routing methods. Our work clearly demonstrates the gains of including noise data when mapping abstract quantum circuits to hardware native ones. History: Accepted by Giacomo Nannicini, Area Editor for Quantum Computing and Operations Research. Accepted for Special Issue on Quantum Computing. Funding: This work was supported by Bavarian state government; Bayerische Staatsministerium für Wirtschaft, Landesentwicklung und Energie. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information ( https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2024.0551 ) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository ( https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2024.0551 ). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/ .
Abstract This paper presents a groundbreaking application of Quantum Machine Learning (QML) in geophysics, specifically targeting seismic fault detection. By integrating quantum computing with machine learning, the study addresses critical limitations of traditional fault detection methods, such as the detection of subtle features, processing efficiency, and scalability. The primary objective is to enhance fault delineation accuracy and provide a robust framework suitable for large-scale seismic surveys and real-time applications. The methodology involves encoding seismic data into quantum states to efficiently handle high-dimensional features. A hybrid quantum-classical model is developed, utilizing quantum-enhanced algorithms for fault detection. This model incorporates Quantum Long Short-Term Memory (QLSTM) networks, which leverage quantum parallelism and interference to enhance the processing capabilities of traditional LSTM networks. The QLSTM architecture employs quantum gates and memory cells to maintain and regulate the flow of quantum information, enabling more efficient and accurate processing of sequential data. The workflow encompasses quantum-based feature extraction, model training with seismic datasets, and validation using both synthetic and real-world examples. Comparative studies with traditional machine learning methods assess performance metrics, including accuracy, noise suppression, and computational efficiency. Quantum hardware simulators ensure the method's feasibility for practical applications. Results demonstrate that QML, powered by QLSTM, significantly outperforms conventional methods in seismic fault detection, achieving higher accuracy, better resolution of subtle geological features, and reduced noise sensitivity. Comprehensive testing on synthetic and field datasets reveals QML's ability to capture complex fault patterns, particularly in geologically challenging settings. Additionally, QML's computational efficiency enables rapid analysis of large datasets, facilitating timely decision-making. In conclusion, QML emerges as a superior approach for seismic fault detection, addressing longstanding challenges and offering novel opportunities for real-time seismic interpretation. By leveraging quantum computing, QML provides unprecedented insights into subsurface structures, leading to more accurate predictions and informed decisions in exploration and production operations. This paper introduces a transformative approach to seismic fault detection, contributing significantly to existing literature and offering actionable insights for the petroleum industry, particularly in subsurface imaging and reservoir characterization.
Context: The main obstacle of quantum computing on its way to scalability is the noisy nature of current hardware. Various types of errors lead to incorrect computational results,and measures such as quantum error mitigation are needed to counteract these errors. Many error mitigation techniques require a thorough understanding of the noise and its impact on computations. Therefore, accurate noise models are indispensable to facilitate meaningful quantum computing in the near future. They also enable realistic simulations of quantum devices. Since these devices are currently limited and quantum computing is expensive, researchers typically rely on simulations for testing their algorithms.Objective: In this thesis, we aim to construct a realistic noise model for quantum computing and optimise its model parameters. The model construction should build on the underlying physical processes, and the number of parameters should scale well with the system size. We also address the evaluation and comparison of different noise models by benchmarks using quantum circuits specific to real-world applications. Finally, we aim to develop useful graphical representations of noise models based on the existing quantum circuit model.Method: We present a benchmarking framework for quantum computing noise models and evaluate it based on benchmarking quality attributes from the literature. Moreover, we construct a quantum computing noise model and develop a training procedure for its parameters. We analyse the parameters of the trained noise model and the impact ofdifferent types of errors on computations. We benchmark the noise model with the above approach and compare it to a noise model provided by IBM’s software development kit Qiskit. Finally, we develop an extension of the quantum circuit model to represent noise channels.Result: The benchmarks performed in this thesis show that our noise model predicts noisy hardware behaviour of IBM’s ibmq_manila quantum device equally well as the Qiskit model, if not better, based on quantum circuits commonly used for variational quantum algorithms. Within the trained noise model, readout error has the most detrimental impact on computations. Our benchmarking approach satisfies relevant quality criteria by choosing suitable quantum circuits and objective functions to compare model predictionsto hardware data. Moreover, the quantum circuit model can be extended meaningfully by noise channels.Conclusion: Our benchmarking approach is suitable for evaluating and comparing quantum computing noise models. In future work, volumetric benchmarks should be performed for various noise models and application contexts. The parameter optimisation based on learning with training circuits yields accurate noise models and shows the importance of mitigating measurement error. Different optimisation algorithms and quantum circuits should be explored, and more types of noise should be incorporated into the noise model.
Quantum noise fundamentally limits the utility of near-term quantum devices, making error mitigation essential for practical quantum computation. While traditional quantum error correction codes require substantial qubit overhead and complex syndrome decoding, we propose a machine learning approach that directly reconstructs clean quantum states from noisy density matrices without additional qubits. We formulate quantum noise reduction as a supervised learning problem using a convolutional neural network (CNN) autoencoder architecture with a novel fidelity-aware composite loss function. Our method is trained and evaluated on a comprehensive synthetic dataset of 10,000 density matrices derived from random 5-qubit quantum circuits, encompassing five noise types (depolarizing, amplitude damping, phase damping, bit-flip, and mixed noise) across four intensity levels (0.05-0.20). The CNN successfully reconstructs quantum states across all noise conditions, achieving an average fidelity improvement from 0.298 to 0.774 (Δ = 0.476). Notably, the model demonstrates superior performance on complex mixed noise scenarios and higher noise intensities, with mixed noise showing the highest corrected fidelity (0.807) and improvement (0.567). The approach effectively preserves both diagonal elements (populations) and off-diagonal elements (quantum coherences), making it suitable for entanglement-dependent quantum algorithms. While phase damping presents fundamental information-theoretic limitations, our results suggest that CNN-based density matrix reconstruction offers a promising, resource-efficient alternative to traditional quantum error correction for NISQ-era devices. This data-driven approach could enable practical quantum advantage with fewer physical qubits than conventional error correction schemes require.
Quantum computing has been moving from a theoretical phase to practical one, presenting daunting challenges in implementing physical qubits, which are subjected to noises from the surrounding environment. These quantum noises are ubiquitous in quantum devices and generate adverse effects in the quantum computational model, leading to extensive research on their correction and mitigation techniques. But do these quantum noises always provide disadvantages? We tackle this issue by proposing a framework called quantum noise-induced reservoir computing and show that some abstract quantum noise models can induce useful information processing capabilities for temporal input data. We demonstrate this ability in several typical benchmarks and investigate the information processing capacity to clarify the framework's processing mechanism and memory profile. We verified our perspective by implementing the framework in a number of IBM quantum processors and obtained similar characteristic memory profiles with model analyses. As a surprising result, information processing capacity increased with quantum devices' higher noise levels and error rates. Our study opens up a novel path for diverting useful information from quantum computer noises into a more sophisticated information processor.