This paper presents a simple experimental method for evaluating a superconducting quantum processor through two-qubit quantum state tomography and generalized GHZ-state benchmarking. The goal is to provide an accessible procedure for assessing hardware fidelity and entanglement capability. The method was demonstrated using IBM’s 127-qubit ibm_brisbane device, where each Bell state was prepared and reconstructed from 10,000 shots, and the resulting fidelities were compared to Qiskit Aer simulations. The method further examines multi-qubit GHZ states to gauge scalability. The main advantages are its simplicity, reproducibility on free IBM Quantum hardware, and its suitability for entry-level experimentation and performance evaluation.
This paper presents a simple experimental method for evaluating a superconducting quantum processor through two-qubit quantum state tomography and generalized GHZ-state benchmarking. The goal is to provide an accessible procedure for assessing hardware fidelity and entanglement capability. The method was demonstrated using IBM’s 127-qubit ibm_brisbane device, where each Bell state was prepared and reconstructed from 10,000 shots, and the resulting fidelities were compared to Qiskit Aer simulations. The method further examines multi-qubit GHZ states to gauge scalability. The main advantages are its simplicity, reproducibility on free IBM Quantum hardware, and its suitability for entry-level experimentation and performance evaluation.
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states are a widely used benchmark for studying multipartite entanglement and coherence in quantum processors. In this work, GHZ states of increasing size were prepared on the 156-qubit IBM Quantum processor ibm_marrakesh and certified using a fidelity-based entanglement witness. State coherence was extracted from parity-oscillation measurements using the multiple-quantum-coherence method. The study investigates how a combination of practical error-reduction techniques affects the largest GHZ state that can be certified on open-access superconducting hardware. These techniques include depth-minimized entangling trees, calibration-aware qubit selection, dynamical decoupling with gate and measurement twirling, and matrix-free readout-error mitigation. A naive implementation fails at larger system sizes, while depth-optimized preparation certifies entanglement up to 14 qubits. Calibration-aware qubit selection extends this to 16 qubits, and readout-error mitigation enables certification of genuine multipartite entanglement up to 18 qubits with a measured fidelity exceeding the witness threshold. The results show that the achievable certification size is determined primarily by the quality of the selected qubit region rather than by the total number of qubits available on the processor. The observed non-monotonic dependence of fidelity on system size reflects variations in local device performance. These findings illustrate the impact of hardware-aware compilation and error-mitigation strategies on entanglement certification using publicly accessible quantum computing platforms.
The Berkeley gate is a high-performance, two-qubit entangling operation with particular potential for quantum error correction and fault-tolerant protocols. However, harnessing this potential on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors, requires efficient compilation and robust performance under realistic noise conditions. In this work, we demonstrate a hardware-efficient implementation of the Berkeley gate on a superconducting quantum processor. Using quantum process tomography (QPT), we experimentally characterize its performance and benchmark it against a noiseless quantum simulator to evaluate its practical reliability in the NISQ era. Experimental measurements confirm the gate's correct logical action, producing the target partially entangled state with a subspace confinement probability of [Formula: see text] on real quantum hardware compared to 100% in quantum simulation. Results from QPT experiments show a simulated process fidelity of [Formula: see text], while the experimental process fidelity on hardware is [Formula: see text]. The observed discrepancy is analyzed in the context of device-specific noise sources, including qubit relaxation, dephasing, and state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors. Our work provides a concrete fidelity benchmark for the Berkeley gate on superconducting hardware and quantify the impact of realistic noise on a non-trivial two-qubit operation, supporting its use in near-term algorithmic and error-correction applications.
Abstract We present an experimental characterization of the three-qubit controlled-controlled-Z (CCZ) gate on IBM Quantum’s 127-qubit superconducting quantum computers, revealing state-backend-dependent performance variations. Using quantum state tomography (QST), we evaluate the gate’s output-state fidelity when applied to three algorithmically significant input states—the W state, the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state, and the uniform superposition state. Each state probes distinct aspects of the reconstructed state fidelity, the GHZ state tests coherence in maximally entangled systems, the W state reveals sensitivity to asymmetric errors, and the uniform superposition assesses basis-state-independent behavior. Experiments were conducted across three computational environments, noise-free simulation, noisy simulation, and actual hardware executions on three IBM Quantum computers, ibm_osaka , ibm_brisbane , and ibm_sherbrooke . State fidelities for the qasm_simulator remained above 99.2% for all input states. Noisy simulations yielded fidelities around 80–82%, while hardware results showed more significant degradation: 67.6% (GHZ), 59.0% (uniform superposition), and 50.3% (W)—highlighting the combined importance of state selection and hardware characteristics for reliable quantum computation. These results quantify the current performance gap between simulated and physical implementations of multi-qubit gates and provide a benchmark for error profiles relevant to near-term quantum algorithms
Abstract Generating and detecting genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) of sizeable quantum states prepared on physical devices is an important benchmark for highlighting the progress of near-term quantum computers. A common approach to certify GME is to prepare a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state and measure a GHZ fidelity of at least 0.5. We measure the fidelities using multiple quantum coherences of GHZ states on 11 to 27 qubits prepared on the IBM Quantum ibmq_montreal device. Combinations of quantum readout error mitigation (QREM) and parity verification error detection are applied to the states. A fidelity of 0.546 ± 0.017 was recorded for a 27-qubit GHZ state when QREM was used, demonstrating GME across the full device with a confidence level of 98.6%. We benchmarked the effect of parity verification on GHZ fidelity for two GHZ state preparation embeddings on the heavy-hexagon architecture. The results show that the effect of parity verification, while relatively modest, led to a detectable improvement of GHZ fidelity.
ve qubit superconducting processor. Two-qubit Bell states and three-qubit GHZ-type states are generated by single and double two-qubit parity measurements on superposition states, respectively, and characterized by both witnessing and state tomography. The protocol for generation of GHZ-type states can be used as the encoding step in the three-qubit bit-ip quantum error correction code, and made deterministic by digital feedback control. We assess its performance by state tomography of the six encoded cardinal states, and compare to the traditional method of encoding by gates.
As quantum technology advances and the size of quantum computers grow, it becomes increasingly important to understand the extent of quality in the devices. As large-scale entanglement is a quantum resource crucial for achieving quantum advantage, the challenge in its generation makes it a valuable benchmark for measuring the performance of universal quantum devices. In this paper, we study entanglement in Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and graph states prepared on the range of IBM Quantum devices. We generate GHZ states and investigate their coherence times with respect to state size and dynamical decoupling techniques. A GHZ fidelity of 0.519 ± 0.014 is measured on a 32-qubit GHZ state, certifying its genuine multipartite entanglement (GME). We show a substantial improvement in GHZ decoherence rates for a seven-qubit GHZ state after implementing dynamical decoupling, and observe a linear trend in the decoherence rate of α = ( 7.13 N + 5.54 ) × 10 − 3 µ s − 1 for up to N = 15 qubits, confirming the absence of superdecoherence. Additionally, we prepare and characterize fully bipartite entangled native-graph states on 22 superconducting quantum devices with qubit counts as high as 414 qubits, all active qubits of the 433-qubit IBM Osprey device. Analysis of the decay of two-qubit entanglement within the prepared states shows suppression of coherent noise signals with the implementation of dynamical decoupling techniques. Additionally, we observe that the entanglement in some qubit pairs oscillates over time, which is likely caused by residual ZZ-interactions. Characterizing entanglement in native-graph states, along with detecting entanglement oscillations, can be an effective approach to low-level device benchmarking that encapsulates two-qubit error rates along with additional sources of noise, with possible applications to quantum circuit compilation. We develop several tools to automate the preparation and entanglement characterization of GHZ and graph states. In particular, a method to characterize graph state bipartite entanglement using just 36 circuits, constant with respect to the number of qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2024