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arXiv:2608.25042

A Unified Framework for Operator Backpropagation and Observable Measurement in Quantum Computing

Kevin Dougherty, Ji Liu

quant-phSubmitted Aug 25, 2026• Announced Aug 27, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Decoherence imposes severe limits on quantum circuit depth, motivating methods to reduce circuit depth. Operator backpropagation has recently been proposed as a way to lower circuit depth by classically backpropagating observables through subcircuits. While it lowers the circuit depth, it also significantly increases the number of backpropagated observables that must be measured. This calls for an efficient measurement protocol tailored to these backpropagated observables. Moreover, errors arise both during the backpropagation procedure and during measurement, and they accumulate in the final computation. No prior work has examined how to integrate operator backpropagation with advanced measurement protocols, and how to jointly optimize the combined process. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive framework to determine the appropriate measurement protocol to achieve a desired level of accuracy with the fewest number of measurements based on the number of qubit-wise commuting (QWC) groups formed from operator backpropagation. We analyze and categorize the primary sources of error that arise through our workflow, including error incurred from the backpropagation algorithm, truncation error, and shot noise variation. We also examine truncation strategies to reduce the number of backpropagated observables by characterizing the structure of the set of backpropagated observables.

Comments
7 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables

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Decoherence imposes severe limits on quantum circuit depth, motivating methods to reduce circuit depth. Operator backpropagation has recently been proposed as a way to lower circuit depth by classically backpropagating observables through subcircuits. While it lowers the circuit depth, it also significantly increases the number of backpropagated observables that must be measured. This calls for an efficient measurement protocol tailored to these backpropagated observables. Moreover, errors arise both during the backpropagation procedure and during measurement, and they accumulate in the final computation. No prior work has examined how to integrate operator backpropagation with advanced measurement protocols, and how to jointly optimize the combined process.
In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive framework to determine the appropriate measurement protocol to achieve a desired level of accuracy with the fewest number of measurements based on the number of qubit-wise commuting (QWC) groups formed from operator backpropagation. We analyze and categorize the primary sources of error that arise through our workflow, including error incurred from the backpropagation algorithm, truncation error, and shot noise variation. We also examine truncation strategies to reduce the number of backpropagated observables by characterizing the structure of the set of backpropagated observables.
Decoherence of quantum hardware is currently limiting its practical applications. At the same time, classical algorithms for simulating quantum circuits have progressed substantially. Here, we demonstrate a hybrid framework that integrates classical simulations with quantum hardware to improve the computation of an observable’s expectation value by reducing the quantum circuit depth. In this framework, a quantum circuit is partitioned into two subcircuits: one that describes the backpropagated Heisenberg evolution of an observable, executed on a classical computer, while the other is a Schrödinger evolution run on quantum processors. The overall effect is to reduce the depths of the circuits executed on quantum devices and enable the recovery of expectation values at intermediate times throughout the classically backpropagated circuit, trading this with classical overhead and an increased number of circuit executions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method on a Hamiltonian simulation problem, achieving more accurate expectation value estimates compared to using quantum hardware alone.
Despite rapid advances in quantum hardware, noise remains a central obstacle to deploying quantum algorithms on near-term devices. In particular, random coherent errors that accumulate during circuit execution constitute a dominant and fundamentally challenging noise source. We introduce a noise-resilient framework for Quantum Signal Processing (QSP) that mitigates such coherent errors without increasing circuit depth or ancillary qubit requirements. Our approach uses ensembles of noisy QSP circuits combined with measurement-level averaging to suppress random phase errors in Z rotations. Building on this framework, we develop robust QSP algorithms for implementing polynomial functions of Hermitian matrices and for estimating observables, with applications to Hamiltonian simulation, quantum linear systems, and ground-state preparation. We analyze the trade-off between approximation error and hardware noise, which is essential for practical implementation under the stringent depth and coherence constraints of current quantum hardware. Our results establish a practical pathway for integrating error mitigation seamlessly into algorithmic design, advancing the development of robust quantum computing, and enabling the discovery of scientific applications with near- and mid-term quantum devices.
Abstract The paradigm of measurement-based quantum computing (MBQC) starts from a highly entangled resource state on which unitary operations are executed through adaptive measurements and corrections ensuring determinism. This is set in contrast to the more common quantum circuit model, in which unitary operations are directly implemented through quantum gates prior to final measurements. In this work, we incorporate concepts from MBQC into the circuit model to create a hybrid simulation technique, permitting us to split any quantum circuit into a classically efficiently simulatable Clifford-part and a second part consisting of a stabilizer state and local (adaptive) measurement instructions—a so-called standard form—which is executed on a quantum computer. We further process the stabilizer state with the graph state formalism, thus, enabling a significant decrease in circuit depth for certain applications. We show that groups of mutually-commuting operators can be implemented using fully-parallel, i.e. non-adaptive, measurements within our protocol. In addition, we discuss how groups of mutually commuting observables can be simulatenously measured by adjusting the resource state, rather than performing a costly basis transformation prior to the measurement as it is done in the circuit model. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our technique on two examples of high practical relevance—the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) for the ground-state energy estimation of the water molecule. For the VQE, we find a reduction of the depth by a factor of 4 to 5 using measurement patterns vs. the standard circuit model. At the same time, since we incorporate the simultaneous measurements, our patterns allow us to save shots by a factor of at least 3.5 compared to measuring Pauli strings individually in the circuit model.
The paradigm of measurement-based quantum computing (MBQC) starts from a highly entangled resource state on which unitary operations are executed through adaptive measurements and corrections ensuring determinism. This is set in contrast to the more common quantum circuit model, in which unitary operations are directly implemented through quantum gates prior to final measurements. In this work, we incorporate concepts from MBQC into the circuit model to create a hybrid simulation technique, permitting us to split any quantum circuit into a classically efficiently simulatable Clifford-part and a second part consisting of a stabilizer state and local (adaptive) measurement instructions—a so-called standard for —which is executed on a quantum computer. We further process the stabilizer state with the graph state formalism, thus, enabling a significant decrease in circuit depth for certain applications. We show that groups of mutually-commuting operators can be implemented using fully-parallel, i.e. non-adaptive, measurements within our protocol. In addition, we discuss how groups of mutually commuting observables can be simulatenously measured by adjusting the resource state, rather than performing a costly basis transformation prior to the measurement as it is done in the circuit model. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our technique on two examples of high practical relevance—the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) for the ground-state energy estimation of the water molecule. For the VQE, we find a reduction of the depth by a factor of 4 to 5 using measurement patterns vs. the standard circuit model. At the same time, since we incorporate the simultaneous measurements, our patterns allow us to save shots by a factor of at least 3.5 compared to measuring Pauli strings individually in the circuit model.
An efficient implementation of quantum algorithms is often hindered by the lack of efficient primitives for operators and state preparation. This limits both the ability of near-term quantum hardware to simulate complex problems and the potential of fault-tolerant algorithms to achieve practical quantum advantage. To address this, we propose a framework that maps discrete operators onto compact, structured quantum circuits. The resulting variational circuits can be tailored to the connectivity and long-range interaction of the target hardware. The learning process employs backpropagation together with a cost function that efficiently optimizes unitary operators and non-unitary --dense or sparse-- operators using only a single ancilla qubit for block encoding. Additionally, we introduce a regularization term that reduces the approximation error. The approach is validated for both quantum mechanical and engineering applications. In the former case, we learn propagators that arise in native quantum problems --such as quantum simulation and quantum chemistry-- and achieve improved resource scaling in comparison to standard Suzuki--Trotter expansions. In the latter case, we demonstrate the approach's ability to implement the second-order central finite difference approximation of the Laplace operator --relevant for solving partial differential equations-- while improving upon current error metrics. The final example deals with learning a dense, non-unitary operator that arises in the analysis of inviscid potential flow around an airfoil. These results motivate the extension of the framework to a broader class of operator-synthesis problems beyond the prototypical engineering and quantum applications considered here.
Measurement overhead and hardware noise present fundamental obstacles to the practical realization of quantum algorithms on near-term quantum devices. In many quantum applications, the dominant computational cost arises from repeated measurements needed to extract accurate information and from handling noise effects. This dissertation develops a unified framework for efficient measurement and error mitigation in quantum algorithms.In this work, measurement is treated as a controllable and designable component across hardware, algorithmic, and statistical levels, rather than as a fixed final step. By tailoring measurement schemes and estimators, we show that substantial reductions in measurement cost can be achieved without sacrificing accuracy. This approach is developed and validated across multiple settings, from hardware-level randomized measurement implementations to algorithm-level molecular energy estimation.At the hardware level, we investigate randomized measurement schemes based on photonic metasurfaces. We find that the device itself naturally realizes the required family of measurement bases without repeated active optical reconfiguration, providing an efficient platform for randomized measurements. We analyze the effect of realistic measurement noise and develop calibration-based error mitigation techniques that suppress noise-induced bias. Numerical studies show that this approach enables accurate estimation of state properties under realistic measurement noise.At the algorithmic level, we investigate measurement-efficient quantum eigen solvers through the Non-Orthogonal Quantum Eigensolver (NOQE). We develop a detailed implementation framework for NOQE, including circuit construction and simplification, analysis of measurement complexity, and resource estimation. Building on this understanding, we incorporate randomized measurements as an alternative to standard Hadamard-test-based schemes and develop shadow-tomography-enhanced variants of NOQE that significantly reduce circuit complexity and qubit requirements while maintaining favorable sample complexity. Shadow-based error mitigation methods, including shadow distillation, further improve robustness against noise.Finally, we investigate a more fundamental redesign of the NOQE measurement task by reformulating matrix-element estimation as a quantum amplitude estimation problem. By integrating iterative quantum amplitude estimation into the NOQE framework, we replace the original incoherent sampling-based estimation with coherent information accumulation through amplitude amplification and achieve near-Heisenberg scaling in measurement complexity, improving on the standard sampling-based methods. Numerical results for molecular energy estimation demonstrate that this approach reaches chemical accuracy with fewer queries than the original NOQE.Overall, this dissertation shows that measurement overhead is not a fixed limitation, but a resource bottleneck that can be identified and reduced at multiple levels in quantum applications. Across the settings studied here, improvements are achieved at different layers, including hardware-aware randomized measurements, algorithm-level redesign of measurement protocols, estimator-level error mitigation, and statistical improvements based on coherent information accumulation. Taken together, these results provide a unified framework for understanding and reducing measurement cost under realistic noise, and offer practical guidance for the design of quantum algorithms on near-term quantum devices.