Noise is usually regarded as the main obstacle to achieving a scalable quantum advantage, but recent evidence in quantum reservoir computing [L. Domingo, F. Borondo, and G. G. Carlo. Taking advantage of noise in quantum reservoir computing, Scientific Reports, 13:8790, 2023] suggests that certain channels can, in appropriate regimes, improve performance by enriching the reservoir's effective dynamics. Motivated by this idea we propose a geometric mechanism to explain how non-unital noise applied together with a universal gate set leads to a faster approach to Haar-like distributions of the final states. We find that noise of this kind induces an effective volume expansion on the manifold of pure states. In order to intuitively understand this we use a minimal 1 qubit model where we take the amplitude damping channel and combine it with a renormalization rule that associates to each resulting mixed state a representative pure state. This composition defines a globally expanding nonlinear map on the space of pure states. We analytically derive the local area expansion factor and identify the global expansion threshold. Finally, we combine amplitude damping with the G3 = {H, T, CNOT} universal gate set to show how the approach to Haar-like behavior is faster in an appropriate parameter region. This leads us to propose noise as a possible resource in future quantum algorithms.
Noise is usually regarded as the main obstacle to achieving a scalable quantum advantage, but recent evidence in quantum reservoir computing [L. Domingo, F. Borondo, and G. G. Carlo. Taking advantage of noise in quantum reservoir computing, Scientific Reports, 13:8790, 2023] suggests that certain channels can, in appropriate regimes, improve performance by enriching the reservoir's effective dynamics. Motivated by this idea we propose a geometric mechanism to explain how non-unital noise applied together with a universal gate set leads to a faster approach to Haar-like distributions of the final states. We find that noise of this kind induces an effective volume expansion on the manifold of pure states. In order to intuitively understand this we use a minimal 1 qubit model where we take the amplitude damping channel and combine it with a renormalization rule that associates to each resulting mixed state a representative pure state. This composition defines a globally expanding nonlinear map on the space of pure states. We analytically derive the local area expansion factor and identify the global expansion threshold. Finally, we combine amplitude damping with the G3 = {H, T, CNOT} universal gate set to show how the approach to Haar-like behavior is faster in an appropriate parameter region. This leads us to propose noise as a possible resource in future quantum algorithms.
The biggest challenge that quantum computing and quantum machine learning are currently facing is the presence of noise in quantum devices. As a result, big efforts have been put into correcting or mitigating the induced errors. But, can these two fields benefit from noise? Surprisingly, we demonstrate that under some circumstances, quantum noise can be used to improve the performance of quantum reservoir computing, a prominent and recent quantum machine learning algorithm. Our results show that the amplitude damping noise can be beneficial to machine learning, while the depolarizing and phase damping noises should be prioritized for correction. This critical result sheds new light into the physical mechanisms underlying quantum devices, providing solid practical prescriptions for a successful implementation of quantum information processing in nowadays hardware.
In the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era, noise is widely regarded as the primary obstacle to achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation. However, certain stages of the quantum computing pipeline can, in fact, benefit from this noise. In this work, we exploit the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis to show that noise generically accelerates a fundamental task in quantum computing -- the preparation of Gibbs states. We demonstrate this behavior using classical and quantum simulations with Haar-random and phase-flip noise, respectively, on a spin-1/2 chain with a local Hamiltonian. Our non-integrable model sees ~3.5x faster thermalization in the presence of noise, while our integrable model, which would not otherwise thermalize, reaches a thermal state due to noise. Since certifying a local Gibbs state is relatively easy on a quantum computer, our approach provides a new practical solution to a key problem in quantum computing. More broadly, these results establish a new paradigm in which noise can be harnessed on quantum computers, enabling practical advantages before the years of fault-tolerance.
The biggest challenge that quantum computing and quantum machine learning are currently facing is the presence of noise in quantum devices. As a result, big efforts have been put into correcting or mitigating the induced errors. But, can these two fields benefit from noise? Surprisingly, we demonstrate that under some circumstances, quantum noise can be used to improve the performance of quantum reservoir computing, a prominent and recent quantum machine learning algorithm. Our results show that the amplitude damping noise can be beneficial to machine learning, while the depolarizing and phase damping noises should be prioritized for correction. This critical result sheds new light into the physical mechanisms underlying quantum devices, providing solid practical prescriptions for a successful implementation of quantum information processing in nowadays hardware.
We identify a noise model that ensures the functioning of an echo state network employing a gate-based quantum computer for reservoir computing applications. Energy dissipation induced by amplitude damping drastically improves the short-term memory capacity and expressivity of the network, by simultaneously providing fading memory and richer dynamics. There is an ideal dissipation rate that ensures the best operation of the echo state network around γ∼ 0.03. Nevertheless, these beneficial effects are stable as the intensity of the applied noise increases. The improvement of the learning is confirmed by emulating a realistic noise model applied to superconducting qubits, paving the way for the application of reservoir computing methods in current non-fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Quantum reservoir computing has emerged as a promising machine learning paradigm for processing temporal data on near-term quantum devices, as it exploits the large computational capacity of qubits without suffering from typical issues arising when training variational quantum circuits. In particular, quantum gate-based echo state networks have proven effective when the evolution of the reservoir circuit is non-unital. Nonetheless, a method for ensuring a tunable and stable non-unital circuit evolution was lacking. We propose an algorithm that induces damping by applying a controlled rotation to each qubit in the reservoir. It enables tunable, circuit-level amplitude amplification of the zero state, maintaining the system away from the maximally mixed state and preventing information loss caused by repeated mid-circuit measurements. The algorithm is inherently stable over time, as it can process arbitrarily long input sequences, beyond the coherence time of individual qubits, by inducing arbitrary damping on each qubit. Moreover, we show that quantum correlations between qubits improve memory retention, underscoring the potential utility of a quantum system as a computational reservoir. We demonstrate, through standard reservoir computing benchmarks, that this algorithm enables robust and scalable quantum random computing on fault-tolerant quantum hardware.
Adding noise can make a random quantum circuit look faster without making its unitary dynamics more random. This distinction is especially relevant in modular processors, where local gates randomize each core and scarce inter-core communication must spread that randomness across the full device. In this paper, we study this problem with a reduced second-moment transfer-matrix theory for Pauli second moments in distributed random circuits affected by the amplitude-damping, depolarizing, and dephasing noise channels. The key step is to resolve the noisy spectrum into two branches: a radial branch, describing dissipative loss of non-identity Pauli weight, and an angular branch, describing Haar-like mixing within the surviving nontrivial sector. This separation gives a simple weak-noise criterion: noise is useful for angular randomization only when it suppresses the longitudinal Bloch component more strongly than the transverse plane. Among the three channels considered, this selects amplitude damping as the only locally favorable case, while depolarizing noise is neutral and dephasing is dominated by radial loss. For multicore architectures, we derive a universal first-order law for radial leakage and track the angular branch numerically across different channels, topologies, and core partitions. The results reveal narrow windows of genuine noise-assisted Haar mixing, most clearly for amplitude damping, but rule out a generic speed-up by noise. The framework therefore distinguishes useful noisy randomization from mere dissipation.