Noise-Driven Variational Quantum Algorithm Optimization

Mastan Mohammed Meera Durga, Rahimullah Shaik, K. Spandana +3 more

Hybrid quantum classical algorithms offer a promising approach for exploiting Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum devices; however, their practical deployment remains limited by excessive circuit depth, hardware noise, and inefficient utilization of quantum resources. This paper presents a Hybrid Variational Optimization (HVO) framework that reduces quantum algorithmic complexity by integrating adaptive circuit pruning with classical feedback-driven optimization and a unified Quantum Complexity Metric (QCM). Unlike prior adaptive variational approaches such as RE-ADAPT-VQA, the proposed framework explicitly optimizes the trade-off between gate count, fidelity, and qubit resources while remaining modular and hardware-agnostic. To ensure a fair and transparent evaluation, the proposed method is compared against a well-tuned shallow Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), QAOA, and RE-ADAPT-VQA. Experimental validation on IBM Quantum simulators and real NISQ hardware demonstrates up to a 35% reduction in circuit complexity, a 30% reduction in execution time, and improved fidelity of 0.94. Furthermore, performance evaluation using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score confirms the robustness and reliability of the proposed framework. These results demonstrate that HVO provides a scalable and noise-resilient solution for near term quantum computing applications.

Enrico Fontana

Zichang He, Bo Peng, Yuri Alexeev +1 more

Given their potential to demonstrate near-term quantum advantage, variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have been extensively studied. Although numerous techniques have been developed for VQA parameter optimization, it remains a significant challenge. A practical issue is that quantum noise is highly unstable and thus it is likely to shift in real time. This presents a critical problem as an optimized VQA ansatz may not perform effectively under a different noise environment. For the first time, we explore how to optimize VQA parameters to be robust against unknown shifted noise. We model the noise level as a random variable with an unknown probability density function (PDF), and we assume that the PDF may shift within an uncertainty set. This assumption guides us to formulate a distributionally robust optimization problem, with the goal of finding parameters that maintain effectiveness under shifted noise. We utilize a distributionally robust Bayesian optimization solver for our proposed formulation. This provides numerical evidence in both the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) and the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) with hardware-efficient ansatz, indicating that we can identify parameters that perform more robustly under shifted noise. We regard this work as the first step towards improving the reliability of VQAs influenced by shifted noise from the parameter optimization perspective.

Madelyn Cain, Leo Zhou, Hannes Pichler +2 more

Mirko Legnini, Julian Berberich

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) are a class of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms that leverage on classical optimization tools to find the optimal parameters for a parameterized quantum circuit. One relevant application of VQAs is the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), which aims at steering the output of the quantum circuit to the ground state of a certain Hamiltonian. Recent works have provided global convergence guarantees for VQEs under suitable local surjectivity and smoothness hypotheses, but little has been done in characterizing convergence of these algorithms when the underlying quantum circuit is affected by noise. In this work, we derive an upper bound on the error on the optimal parameters of a VQE under the effect of different coherent and incoherent noise processes. We then procced to show robust convergence guarantees of the algorithm to the perturbed optimal parameters. Our work provides novel theoretical insight into the behavior of VQAs subject to noise. Furthermore, we accompany our results with numerical simulations implemented via Pennylane.

Jinfeng Zeng, Muxi Zheng, Hang Li +2 more

Abstract Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) offer a promising approach to solving optimization problems on quantum computers. In this paper, we investigate the use of VQAs to solve the Learning With Errors (LWE) problem, a crucial challenge in post-quantum cryptography. We propose a VQA-based algorithm and a Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) for solving the Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) problem, a special case of LWE. We examine the sample complexity of combinatorial optimization methods for LPN and analyze the performance of these two variational quantum algorithms in terms of quantum resources. For the VQA algorithm, both the number of qubits and the circuit depth scale polynomially with the secret key length n . In the case of QAOA, the number of qubits matches the secret key length n , but the CNOT gate count increases exponentially with n . However, numerical simulations of the VQA-based algorithm show that choosing optimal ansatzes and optimization methods can significantly enhance success rates.