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arXiv:2606.01226

Realizing leakage elimination operator-based adiabatic speedup on a superconducting quantum processor

Jia-Yi Fan, Kai-Yu Yuan, Zong-Yuan Ge, Feng-Hua Ren, Zhao-Ming Wang

quant-phSubmitted May 31, 2026• Announced Jun 2, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

The slow evolution required for adiabaticity in adiabatic quantum computation renders the system vulnerable to environmental noise. Leakage elimination operator (LEO) control provides an effective strategy to realize adiabatic speedup over a short timescale, thus mitigating the noise impact. Despite extensive theoretical investigations, the realization of LEO-based adiabatic speedup on realistic superconducting quantum processors remains absent. In this work, we present such a realization on IBM superconducting quantum processors. We first characterize the trade-off between adiabaticity and noise accumulation by varying the total evolution time on both the Qiskit simulator and the ibm_marrakesh processor, employing a comprehensive noise model that closely reproduces the experimental results. We then implement ideal LEO pulse derived for a closed system and achieve a significant enhancement of adiabatic fidelity within a short evolution time. To further improve the adiabatic fidelity, we refine the ideal LEO pulse via Bayesian optimization based on the comprehensive noise model. The optimized pulse yields a modest fidelity gain in simulation, yet on hardware it falls short of the ideal pulse under the present experimental conditions. Our work validates the feasibility of LEO-based adiabatic speedup on a superconducting quantum processor and highlights the potential of LEO for noise-aware adiabatic dynamics.

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The slow evolution required for adiabaticity in adiabatic quantum computation renders the system vulnerable to environmental noise. Leakage elimination operator (LEO) control provides an effective strategy to realize adiabatic speedup over a short timescale, thus mitigating the noise impact. Despite extensive theoretical investigations, the realization of LEO-based adiabatic speedup on realistic superconducting quantum processors remains absent. In this work, we present such a realization on IBM superconducting quantum processors. We first characterize the trade-off between adiabaticity and noise accumulation by varying the total evolution time on both the Qiskit simulator and the ibm_marrakesh processor, employing a comprehensive noise model that closely reproduces the experimental results. We then implement ideal LEO pulse derived for a closed system and achieve a significant enhancement of adiabatic fidelity within a short evolution time. To further improve the adiabatic fidelity, we refine the ideal LEO pulse via Bayesian optimization based on the comprehensive noise model. The optimized pulse yields a modest fidelity gain in simulation, yet on hardware it falls short of the ideal pulse under the present experimental conditions. Our work validates the feasibility of LEO-based adiabatic speedup on a superconducting quantum processor and highlights the potential of LEO for noise-aware adiabatic dynamics.
Adiabatic evolution is used in a variety of quantum information processing tasks. However, the elimination of errors is not as well developed as it is for circuit model processing. Here, we present a strategy to improve the performance of a quantum adiabatic process by adding leakage elimination operators (LEOs) to the evolution. These are a sequence of pulse controls acting in an adiabatic subspace to eliminate errors by suppressing unwanted transitions. Using the Feshbach PQPQPQ partitioning technique, we obtain an analytical solution for a set of pulse controls. The effectiveness of the LEO is independent of the specific form of the pulse but depends on the average frequency of the control function. By observing that the evolution of the target eigenstate is governed by a periodic function appearing in the integral of the control function, we show that control parameters can be chosen in such a way that the instantaneous eigenstates of the system are unchanged, yet a speedup can be achieved by suppressing transitions. Furthermore, we give the exact expression of the control function for a counter unitary transformation to be used in experiments which provides a clear physical meaning for the LEO, aiding in the implementation.
Adiabatic evolution is required in performing quantum information processing tasks and adiabatic speedup is often used to avoid decoherence problems for a long evolution time.Here, we add a leakage elimination operator (LEO) Hamiltonian to the evolution and adiabatic speedup can be obtained.LEO Hamiltonians can be realized by a sequence of periodic zero-energy-change pulses.By using the Feshbach P -Q partitioning technique, we obtain the exact control parameters to realize adiabatic speedup for different types of pulses.Furthermore, we show that this control scheme is fault-tolerant against pulse strength and pulse frequency for specified thresholds.
Effective quantum control is essential for quantum computing and information processing, yet level leakage remains a bottleneck limiting control fidelity. The leakage elimination operator (LEO) approach is highly effective at suppressing leakage from a target subspace to other subspaces. Analytical control conditions under the high-frequency driving limit have been derived via the Feshbach PQ partitioning technique. However, the driving intensity is subject to fundamental physical bounds, and low-frequency driving is experimentally more feasible. In this work, we reformulate LEO within the Magnus framework and extend it beyond the high-frequency limit. We show that the analytical control conditions obtained from the Feshbach PQ partitioning technique are equivalent to the zeroth-order Magnus expansion. We then analyze the higher-order Magnus corrections. By minimizing the leakage, we obtain a modified pulse condition suitable for the low-frequency regime. As an illustrative example, we study near-perfect state transfer through a one-dimensional spin chain under LEO control. We find that the second-order Magnus correction improves the transmission fidelity at low-frequency driving, while the improvement becomes negligible at high frequencies. Our results provide an effective route for designing control pulses in the low-frequency regime, with potential applications in superconducting qubits, trapped ions, and solid-state spin systems.
Decoherence-induced leakage errors can potentially damage physical or logical qubits embedded in a subspace of the entire Hilbert space by coupling them to other system levels. Here we report the first experimental implementation of Leakage Elimination Operators (LEOs) that aims to reduce this undermining. LEOs are a type of dynamical decoupling control that have been previously introduced to counteract leakage from a chosen subspace into the rest of a Hilbert space, and have been widely explored theoretically. Different from other error correction strategies, LEOs are compatible with any gate sequence in a code space, and thus, compatible with universal quantum computation. Using IBM's cloud quantum computer (QC), we design three potentially applicable examples of subspaces in two- and three-qubit Hilbert spaces and derive the explicit forms of the corresponding LEOs for these subspaces. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate that these LEOs significantly suppress leakage. The results also show that the LEO time-scale condition can be satisfied with noise in the IBM's cloud QC and pave a way for quantum setups to get rid of leakage trouble.
The presence of noise is the primary challenge in realizing fault-tolerant quantum computers. In this work, we introduce and experimentally validate a novel strategy to circumvent noise by exploiting the phenomenon of metastability, where a dynamical system exhibits a separation of time scales in its evolution. We demonstrate that if quantum hardware noise exhibits metastability, both digital and analog algorithms can be designed in a noise-aware fashion to achieve intrinsic resilience. We develop a general theoretical framework and introduce an efficiently computable noise vulnerability metric that avoids the need for full classical simulation of the quantum algorithm. We show that the noise vulnerability index bounds errors in noisy implementations, with smaller values indicating greater fidelity between the achieved and target quantum states. We illustrate the use of our framework with applications to variational quantum algorithms and analog adiabatic state preparation. Crucially, we provide experimental evidence supporting the presence of metastable noise in gate-model quantum processors and quantum annealing devices. Thus, we establish that the noise properties in near-term quantum hardware can directly inform practical implementation strategies, enabling the preparation of final noisy states that more closely approximate the ideal ones.
Abstract Perfect state transfer (PST) through a spin chain can be theoretically obtained via predesigned PST couplings. We perform the algorithmic PST simulations through short spin chains on IBM quantum computers, alongside Qiskit simulations. The results demonstrate low transmission success probability (SP) due to noise. To characterize the noise effects in system dynamics, we propose a comprehensive noise model incorporating Pauli errors, thermal relaxation, dephasing, and ZZ crosstalk. Simulations of the SP time evolution using this model in Qiskit show strong agreement with the experimental results. Building on the model, we further propose two noise mitigation strategies: rescaling technique and optimal coupling design via grid search or Bayesian optimization. Both approaches yield significant SP improvements in simulations and on hardware. Our work underscores the challenges in implementing algorithms on current quantum hardware and paves the way for developing noise-resistant protocols.