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arXiv:2510.03077

Probability distribution reconstruction using circuit cutting applied to a variational classifier

Niels M. P. Neumann, Rocha, Carlos M. R., Verbree, Jasper, van Vliet, Marc

Published Oct 3, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Significant efforts are being spent on building a quantum computer. At the same time, developments in quantum software are rapidly progressing. Insufficient quantum resources often are the problem when running quantum algorithms. New techniques can aid in using smaller quantum computers to run larger quantum algorithms. One of these techniques is circuit cutting. With this method, a circuit is broken into multiple pieces, each of which is run on quantum hardware independently and then recombined to obtain the overall answer. These circuit cutting techniques require additional circuit evaluations, which can form a bottleneck for algorithms requiring many interactions. This work explores the potential of circuit cutting techniques precisely in this regime of many interactions. We consider two different models, a standard method based on expectation values, and a novel method based on probability distribution reconstruction. Next, we compare two different training methods we call train-then-cut and cut-then-train and show that in practice, cut-then-train still produces good results. This observation brings closer the practical applicability of circuit cutting techniques, as a train-then-cut strategy is often infeasible. We conclude by implementing a cut and uncut circuit and find that circuit cutting helps achieve higher fidelity results.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2510.03077

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Significant efforts are being spent on building a quantum computer. At the same time, developments in quantum software are rapidly progressing. Insufficient quantum resources often are the problem when running quantum algorithms. New techniques can aid in using smaller quantum computers to run larger quantum algorithms. One of these techniques is circuit cutting. With this method, a circuit is broken into multiple pieces, each of which is run on quantum hardware independently and then recombined to obtain the overall answer. These circuit cutting techniques require additional circuit evaluations, which can form a bottleneck for algorithms requiring many interactions. This work explores the potential of circuit cutting techniques precisely in this regime of many interactions. We consider two different models, a standard method based on expectation values, and a novel method based on probability distribution reconstruction. Next, we compare two different training methods we call train-then-cut and cut-then-train and show that in practice, cut-then-train still produces good results. This observation brings closer the practical applicability of circuit cutting techniques, as a train-then-cut strategy is often infeasible. We conclude by implementing a cut and uncut circuit and find that circuit cutting helps achieve higher fidelity results.
Current quantum computers suffer from a limited number of qubits and high error rates, limiting practical applicability. Different techniques exist to mitigate these effects and run larger algorithms. In this work, we analyze one of these techniques called quantum circuit cutting. With circuit cutting, a quantum circuit is decomposed into smaller sub-circuits, each of which can be run on smaller quantum hardware. We compare the performance of quantum circuit cutting with different cutting strategies, and then apply circuit cutting to a QAOA algorithm. Using simulations, we first show that Randomized Clifford measurements outperform both Pauli and random unitary measurements. Second, we show that circuit cutting has trouble providing correct answers in noisy settings, especially as the number of circuits increases.
Circuit cutting allows quantum circuits larger than the available hardware to be executed. Cutting techniques split circuits into smaller subcircuits, run them on the hardware, and recombine results through classical post-processing. Circuit cutting techniques have been extensively researched over the last five years and it been adopted by major quantum hardware vendors as part of their scaling roadmaps. We examine whether current circuit cutting techniques are practical for orchestrating executions on fault-tolerant quantum computers. We conduct a resource estimation-based benchmarking of important quantum applications and different types of circuit cutting techniques. Our applications include practically relevant algorithms, such as Hamiltonian simulation, kernels such as quantum Fourier transform and more. To cut these applications, we use IBM's Qiskit cutting tool. We estimate resources for subcircuits using Microsoft's Azure Quantum Resource Estimator and develop models to determine the qubit, quantum and classical runtime needs of circuit cutting. We demonstrate that while circuit cutting works for small-scale systems, the exponential growth of the quantum runtime and the classical post-processing overhead as the qubit count increases renders it impractical for larger quantum systems with current implementation strategies. As we transition from noisy quantum hardware to fault-tolerance, our work provides important guidance for the design of quantum software and runtime systems.
Near-term hardware is constrained by high error rates, small qubit counts, and relatively low output fidelity, making the execution of large, high performance quantum circuits difficult. Circuit partitioning (or circuit cutting) has emerged as a promising approach to circumvent these limitations by decomposing circuits into smaller subcircuits at two-qubit interaction points. However, it remains unclear which classes of circuits benefit the most from partitioning and under what hardware conditions it is most effective. In this work, we evaluate the suitability of quantum circuits for partitioning from three perspectives: improving fidelity, enabling distributed execution, and scaling to larger circuit sizes. Specifically, we compare uncut circuit execution against two circuit partitioning approaches: Qiskit's automatic cut finding technique and a custom performance optimized circuit cutting method. We also measure these across GHZ, QFT, brickwork, and random quantum circuits ranging from 4 to 14 qubits, using mean absolute error of expectation values and overall output fidelity. Our results show that partitioning benefits larger, highly interconnected circuits, with our custom method reducing error by up to 55\% and improve fidelity for GHZ circuits, but degrading performance for brickwork circuits at larger scales.
Circuit cutting allows quantum circuits larger than the available hardware to be executed. Cutting techniques split circuits into smaller subcircuits, run them on the hardware, and recombine results through classical post-processing. Circuit cutting techniques have been extensively researched over the last five years and it been adopted by quantum companies, like IBM, as part of their scaling roadmap. We examine whether current circuit cutting techniques are practical for orchestrating executions on fault-tolerant quantum computers. We conduct a resource estimation-based benchmarking of important quantum applications and different types of circuit cutting techniques. Our applications include practically relevant algorithms such as Hamiltonian simulation, kernels such as quantum Fourier transform and more. To cut these applications, we use IBM's Qiskit cutting tool. We estimate resources for subcircuits using Microsoft's Azure Quantum Resource Estimator and develop models to determine qubit counts and the quantum and classical runtime needs of circuit cutting. We demonstrate that while circuit cutting works for small-scale systems, the exponential growth of the quantum excution runtime and the classical post-processing overhead as the qubit count increases renders it impractical for larger quantum systems with current implementation strategies. As we transition from noisy quantum hardware to fault-tolerance, our work provides useful guidance for the design of quantum software and runtime systems.
Circuit cutting was originally designed to retrieve the expectation value of an observable with respect to a large quantum circuit by executing smaller circuit fragments. In this work, however, we demonstrate the application of circuit cutting to a pure sampling task. In particular, we sample solutions to an optimization problem from a trained QAOA circuit. Here, circuit cutting leads to a broadening and shift of the bitstring distribution towards suboptimal values compared to the uncut case. To reduce this effect, we minimize the number of required cuts via integer programming methods. On the other hand, cutting reduces the circuit size and thus the impact of noise. Our experiments on quantum hardware reveal that, for large circuits, the effect of noise reduction outweighs the derogative effects on the bitstring distribution. The study therefore provides evidence that circuit cutting combined with optimized cutting schemes can both scale problem size and mitigate noise for near-term quantum optimization.
Current and imminent quantum hardware lacks reliability and applicability due to noise and limited qubit counts. Quantum circuit cutting -- a technique dividing large quantum circuits into smaller subcircuits with sizes appropriate for the limited quantum resource at hand -- is used to mitigate these problems. However, classical postprocessing involved in circuit cutting generally grows exponentially with the number of cuts and quantum counts. This article introduces the notion of approximate circuit reconstruction. Using a sampling-based method like Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), we probabilistically select bit strings of high probability upon reconstruction. This avoids excessive calculations when reconstructing the full probability distribution. Our results show that such a sampling-based postprocessing method holds great potential for fast and reliable circuit reconstruction in the NISQ era and beyond.