Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Assessment of Commuting Pauli Product Grouping Measurement Techniques in the Presence of Noise

Zachary Pierce Bansingh

Published Jun 1, 2023• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Measuring quantum observables by grouping terms that can be rotated to sums of only products of Pauli ˆz operators (Ising form) is proven to be efficient in near-term quantum computing algorithms.This approach requires extra unitary transformations to rotate the state of interest so that the measurement of a fragment’s Ising form would be equivalent to measurement of the fragment for the unrotated state. These extra rotations allow one to perform a fewer number of measurements by grouping more terms into the measurable fragments with a lower overall estimator variance. However, previous estimations of the number of measurements did not take into account non-unit fidelity of quantum gates implementing the additional transformations. Through a circuit fidelity reduction, additional transformations introduce extra uncertainty and increase the needed number of measurements. Here we consider a simple model for errors introduced by additional gates needed in schemes involving grouping of commuting Pauli products. For a set of molecular electronic Hamiltonians, we confirm that the numbers of measurements in schemes using non-local qubit rotations are still lower than those in their local qubit rotation counterparts, even after accounting for uncertainties introduced by additional gates.

Related papers

Fidelity Overhead for Nonlocal Measurements in Variational Quantum Algorithms

Zachary Pierce Bansingh, Tzu-Ching Yen, Peter D. Johnson +1 more

operators (Ising form) is proven to be efficient in near term quantum computing algorithms. This approach requires extra unitary transformations to rotate the state of interest so that the measurement of a fragment's Ising form would be equivalent to the measurement of the fragment for the unrotated state. These extra rotations allow one to perform a fewer number of measurements by grouping more terms into the measurable fragments with a lower overall estimator variance. However, previous estimations of the number of measurements did not take into account nonunit fidelity of quantum gates implementing the additional transformations. Through a circuit fidelity reduction, additional transformations introduce extra uncertainty and increase the needed number of measurements. Here we consider a simple model for errors introduced by additional gates needed in schemes involving groupings of commuting Pauli products. For a set of molecular electronic Hamiltonians, we confirm that the numbers of measurements in schemes using nonlocal qubit rotations are still lower than those in their local qubit rotation counterparts, even after accounting for uncertainties introduced by additional gates.

arXiv:2205.07113•The Journal of Physical Chemistry A•Sep 23, 2022•17 citations

Improving Quantum Measurements by Introducing “Ghost” Pauli Products

Seonghoon Choi, Tzu-Ching Yen, Artur F. Izmaylov

Reducing the number of measurements required to estimate the expectation value of an observable is crucial for the variational quantum eigensolver to become competitive with state-of-the-art classical algorithms. To measure complicated observables such as a molecular electronic Hamiltonian, one of the common strategies is to partition the observable into linear combinations (fragments) of mutually commutative Pauli products. The total number of measurements for obtaining the expectation value is then proportional to the sum of variances of individual fragments. We propose a method that lowers individual fragment variances by modifying the fragments without changing the total observable expectation value. Our approach is based on adding Pauli products ("ghosts") that are compatible with members of multiple fragments. The total expectation value does not change because a sum of coefficients for each "ghost" Pauli product introduced to several fragments is zero. Yet, these additions change individual fragment variances because of the non-vanishing contributions of "ghost" Pauli products within each fragment. The proposed algorithm minimizes individual fragment variances using a classically efficient approximation of the quantum wavefunction for variance estimations. Numerical tests on a few molecular electronic Hamiltonian expectation values show several-fold reductions in the number of measurements in the "ghost" Pauli algorithm compared to those in the other recently developed techniques.

arXiv:2208.06563•Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation•Nov 4, 2022•30 citations

Deterministic improvements of quantum measurements with grouping of compatible operators, non-local transformations, and covariance estimates

Tzu-Ching Yen, Aadithya Ganeshram, Artur F. Izmaylov

Obtaining the expectation value of an observable on a quantum computer is a crucial step in the variational quantum algorithms. For complicated observables such as molecular electronic Hamiltonians, one of the strategies is to present the observable as a linear combination of measurable fragments. The main problem of this approach is a large number of measurements required for accurate estimation of the observable's expectation value. We consider three previously studied directions that minimize the number of measurements: (1) grouping commuting operators using the greedy approach, (2) involving non-local unitary transformations for measuring, and (3) taking advantage of compatibility of some Pauli products with several measurable groups. The last direction gives rise to a general framework that not only provides improvements over previous methods but also connects measurement grouping approaches with recent advances in techniques of shadow tomography. Following this direction, we develop two measurement schemes that achieve a severalfold reduction in the number of measurements for a set of model molecules compared to previous state-of-the-art methods.

arXiv:2201.01471•npj Quantum Information•Feb 22, 2023•63 citations

Efficient quantum measurement of Pauli operators in the presence of finite sampling error

Ophelia Crawford, Barnaby van Straaten, Daochen Wang +3 more

Estimating the expectation value of an operator corresponding to an observable is a fundamental task in quantum computation. It is often impossible to obtain such estimates directly, as the computer is restricted to measuring in a fixed computational basis. One common solution splits the operator into a weighted sum of Pauli operators and measures each separately, at the cost of many measurements. An improved version collects mutually commuting Pauli operators together before measuring all operators within a collection simultaneously. The effectiveness of doing this depends on two factors. Firstly, we must understand the improvement offered by a given arrangement of Paulis in collections. In our work, we propose two natural metrics for quantifying this, operating under the assumption that measurements are distributed optimally among collections so as to minimise the overall finite sampling error. Motivated by the mathematical form of these metrics, we introduce S ORTED I NSERTION, a collecting strategy that exploits the weighting of each Pauli operator in the overall sum. Secondly, to measure all Pauli operators within a collection simultaneously, a circuit is required to rotate them to the computational basis. In our work, we present two efficient circuit constructions that suitably rotate any collection of k independent commuting n -qubit Pauli operators using at most k n − k ( k + 1 ) / 2 and O ( k n / log ⁡ k ) two-qubit gates respectively. Our methods are numerically illustrated in the context of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver, where the operators in question are molecular Hamiltonians. As measured by our metrics, S ORTED I NSERTION outperforms four conventional greedy colouring algorithms that seek the minimum number of collections.

arXiv:1908.06942•Quantum•Jan 20, 2021•183 citations

Optimised Baranyai partitioning of the second quantised Hamiltonian

Bence Csakany, Alex J. W. Thom

Simultaneous measurement of multiple Pauli strings (tensor products of Pauli matrices) is the basis for efficient measurement of observables on quantum computers by partitioning the observable into commuting sets of Pauli strings. We present the implementation and optimisation of the Baranyai grouping method for second quantised Hamiltonian partitioning in molecules up to CH$_4$ (cc-pVDZ, 68 qubits) and efficient construction of the diagonalisation circuit in $O(N)$ quantum gates, compared to $O(N^2)$, where $N$ is the number of qubits. We show that this method naturally handles sparsity in the Hamiltonian and produces a $O(1)$ number of groups for linearly scaling Hamiltonians, such as those formed by molecules in a line; rising to $O(N^3)$ for fully connected two-body Hamiltonians. While this is more measurements than some other schemes it allows for the flexibility to move Pauli strings and optimise the variance. We also present an explicit optimisation for spin-symmetry which reduces the number of groups by a factor of $8$, without extra computational effort.

arXiv:2311.11826•Nov 20, 2023•1 citation

Variance reduction methods in the estimation of Pauli sums

Søren Fuglede Jørgensen, Rafael Emilio Barfknecht, Patrick Ettenhuber +1 more

Accurately estimating expectation values of quantum observables with as few measurements as possible is crucial to many quantum computing applications. We introduce a framework that covers many of existing measurement strategies and introduce heuristics that can be used to enhance randomized schemes, including those based on Pauli grouping with inverse probability weighting and variants of the classical shadow algorithm. We show how to maximize information gain from such schemes, while carefully optimizing the distribution of possible measurements, and show that simple grouping algorithms can get close to, and in some cases exceed, state-of-the-art accuracy for unbiased estimation of expectation values on a standard quantum chemistry benchmark. We show how these randomized methods may be compared to more recent measurement schemes, such as shadow grouping, derandomized shadow, and overlapped grouping measurement, we show how the same strategies can be used to augment these schemes, and we demonstrate that we can reduce measurement costs by up to a factor of two by allowing Clifford measurement circuits for otherwise Clifford-less methods.

quant-pharXiv:2603.20029•Mar 23, 2026•0 citations
Measuring quantum observables by grouping terms that can be rotated to sums of only products of Pauli ˆz operators (Ising form) is proven to be efficient in near-term quantum computing algorithms.This approach requires extra unitary transformations to rotate the state of interest so that the measurement of a fragment’s Ising form would be equivalent to measurement of the fragment for the unrotated state. These extra rotations allow one to perform a fewer number of measurements by grouping more terms into the measurable fragments with a lower overall estimator variance. However, previous estimations of the number of measurements did not take into account non-unit fidelity of quantum gates implementing the additional transformations. Through a circuit fidelity reduction, additional transformations introduce extra uncertainty and increase the needed number of measurements. Here we consider a simple model for errors introduced by additional gates needed in schemes involving grouping of commuting Pauli products. For a set of molecular electronic Hamiltonians, we confirm that the numbers of measurements in schemes using non-local qubit rotations are still lower than those in their local qubit rotation counterparts, even after accounting for uncertainties introduced by additional gates.
operators (Ising form) is proven to be efficient in near term quantum computing algorithms. This approach requires extra unitary transformations to rotate the state of interest so that the measurement of a fragment's Ising form would be equivalent to the measurement of the fragment for the unrotated state. These extra rotations allow one to perform a fewer number of measurements by grouping more terms into the measurable fragments with a lower overall estimator variance. However, previous estimations of the number of measurements did not take into account nonunit fidelity of quantum gates implementing the additional transformations. Through a circuit fidelity reduction, additional transformations introduce extra uncertainty and increase the needed number of measurements. Here we consider a simple model for errors introduced by additional gates needed in schemes involving groupings of commuting Pauli products. For a set of molecular electronic Hamiltonians, we confirm that the numbers of measurements in schemes using nonlocal qubit rotations are still lower than those in their local qubit rotation counterparts, even after accounting for uncertainties introduced by additional gates.
Reducing the number of measurements required to estimate the expectation value of an observable is crucial for the variational quantum eigensolver to become competitive with state-of-the-art classical algorithms. To measure complicated observables such as a molecular electronic Hamiltonian, one of the common strategies is to partition the observable into linear combinations (fragments) of mutually commutative Pauli products. The total number of measurements for obtaining the expectation value is then proportional to the sum of variances of individual fragments. We propose a method that lowers individual fragment variances by modifying the fragments without changing the total observable expectation value. Our approach is based on adding Pauli products ("ghosts") that are compatible with members of multiple fragments. The total expectation value does not change because a sum of coefficients for each "ghost" Pauli product introduced to several fragments is zero. Yet, these additions change individual fragment variances because of the non-vanishing contributions of "ghost" Pauli products within each fragment. The proposed algorithm minimizes individual fragment variances using a classically efficient approximation of the quantum wavefunction for variance estimations. Numerical tests on a few molecular electronic Hamiltonian expectation values show several-fold reductions in the number of measurements in the "ghost" Pauli algorithm compared to those in the other recently developed techniques.
Obtaining the expectation value of an observable on a quantum computer is a crucial step in the variational quantum algorithms. For complicated observables such as molecular electronic Hamiltonians, one of the strategies is to present the observable as a linear combination of measurable fragments. The main problem of this approach is a large number of measurements required for accurate estimation of the observable's expectation value. We consider three previously studied directions that minimize the number of measurements: (1) grouping commuting operators using the greedy approach, (2) involving non-local unitary transformations for measuring, and (3) taking advantage of compatibility of some Pauli products with several measurable groups. The last direction gives rise to a general framework that not only provides improvements over previous methods but also connects measurement grouping approaches with recent advances in techniques of shadow tomography. Following this direction, we develop two measurement schemes that achieve a severalfold reduction in the number of measurements for a set of model molecules compared to previous state-of-the-art methods.
Estimating the expectation value of an operator corresponding to an observable is a fundamental task in quantum computation. It is often impossible to obtain such estimates directly, as the computer is restricted to measuring in a fixed computational basis. One common solution splits the operator into a weighted sum of Pauli operators and measures each separately, at the cost of many measurements. An improved version collects mutually commuting Pauli operators together before measuring all operators within a collection simultaneously. The effectiveness of doing this depends on two factors. Firstly, we must understand the improvement offered by a given arrangement of Paulis in collections. In our work, we propose two natural metrics for quantifying this, operating under the assumption that measurements are distributed optimally among collections so as to minimise the overall finite sampling error. Motivated by the mathematical form of these metrics, we introduce S ORTED I NSERTION, a collecting strategy that exploits the weighting of each Pauli operator in the overall sum. Secondly, to measure all Pauli operators within a collection simultaneously, a circuit is required to rotate them to the computational basis. In our work, we present two efficient circuit constructions that suitably rotate any collection of k independent commuting n -qubit Pauli operators using at most k n − k ( k + 1 ) / 2 and O ( k n / log ⁡ k ) two-qubit gates respectively. Our methods are numerically illustrated in the context of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver, where the operators in question are molecular Hamiltonians. As measured by our metrics, S ORTED I NSERTION outperforms four conventional greedy colouring algorithms that seek the minimum number of collections.
Simultaneous measurement of multiple Pauli strings (tensor products of Pauli matrices) is the basis for efficient measurement of observables on quantum computers by partitioning the observable into commuting sets of Pauli strings. We present the implementation and optimisation of the Baranyai grouping method for second quantised Hamiltonian partitioning in molecules up to CH4_44​ (cc-pVDZ, 68 qubits) and efficient construction of the diagonalisation circuit in O(N)O(N)O(N) quantum gates, compared to O(N2)O(N^2)O(N2), where NNN is the number of qubits. We show that this method naturally handles sparsity in the Hamiltonian and produces a O(1)O(1)O(1) number of groups for linearly scaling Hamiltonians, such as those formed by molecules in a line; rising to O(N3)O(N^3)O(N3) for fully connected two-body Hamiltonians. While this is more measurements than some other schemes it allows for the flexibility to move Pauli strings and optimise the variance. We also present an explicit optimisation for spin-symmetry which reduces the number of groups by a factor of 888, without extra computational effort.
Accurately estimating expectation values of quantum observables with as few measurements as possible is crucial to many quantum computing applications. We introduce a framework that covers many of existing measurement strategies and introduce heuristics that can be used to enhance randomized schemes, including those based on Pauli grouping with inverse probability weighting and variants of the classical shadow algorithm. We show how to maximize information gain from such schemes, while carefully optimizing the distribution of possible measurements, and show that simple grouping algorithms can get close to, and in some cases exceed, state-of-the-art accuracy for unbiased estimation of expectation values on a standard quantum chemistry benchmark. We show how these randomized methods may be compared to more recent measurement schemes, such as shadow grouping, derandomized shadow, and overlapped grouping measurement, we show how the same strategies can be used to augment these schemes, and we demonstrate that we can reduce measurement costs by up to a factor of two by allowing Clifford measurement circuits for otherwise Clifford-less methods.