Quantum computing on Noisy Intermediate-ScaleQuantum (NISQ) devices is fundamentally limited by noise, ne-cessitating effective error mitigation techniques. Existing methodssuch as Zero Noise Extrapolation (ZNE) including linear andRichardson extrapolation variants exhibit varying performanceacross circuits and noise regimes, with no single method univer-sally optimal. In this work, we propose a regime-aware adaptiveframework that leverages machine learning to dynamically selectthe most effective mitigation strategy for a given circuit and noisecondition. Two XGBoost regressors independently predict theexpected improvement of Linear ZNE and Richardson ZNE, andthe method with the higher predicted score is selected at runtime.The selector achieves 64.3% exact accuracy, representing an 11.9percentage point improvement over the strongest fixed-methodbaseline. The adaptive selector outperforms Richardson ZNEon all four benchmark circuits and matches or exceeds bothbaselines on structured, deeper circuits. These results highlightthe importance of data-driven, regime-aware mitigation selectionfor improving the reliability of near-term quantum computations.
Quantum computing on Noisy Intermediate-ScaleQuantum (NISQ) devices is fundamentally limited by noise, ne-cessitating effective error mitigation techniques. Existing methodssuch as Zero Noise Extrapolation (ZNE) including linear andRichardson extrapolation variants exhibit varying performanceacross circuits and noise regimes, with no single method univer-sally optimal. In this work, we propose a regime-aware adaptiveframework that leverages machine learning to dynamically selectthe most effective mitigation strategy for a given circuit and noisecondition. Two XGBoost regressors independently predict theexpected improvement of Linear ZNE and Richardson ZNE, andthe method with the higher predicted score is selected at runtime.The selector achieves 64.3% exact accuracy, representing an 11.9percentage point improvement over the strongest fixed-methodbaseline. The adaptive selector outperforms Richardson ZNEon all four benchmark circuits and matches or exceeds bothbaselines on structured, deeper circuits. These results highlightthe importance of data-driven, regime-aware mitigation selectionfor improving the reliability of near-term quantum computations.
Variational quantum circuits (VQCs) are central to near-term quantum computing, yet their practical deployment is severely hindered by noise. While existing error mitigation methods, such as zero-noise extrapolation (ZNE), typically assume static noise, real noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) systems exhibit dynamic, time-varying noise that remains largely unaddressed. To overcome this critical gap, our work introduces a novel adaptive noise mitigation framework for VQCs that integrates ZNE with contextual multi-armed bandits (CMAB), enabling dynamic, context-aware selection of circuit-folding levels based on ansatz parameters (e.g., depth, parameter count) and the evolving noise environment. Unlike fixed-fold or heuristic ZNE, our approach uses online adaptation to improve the accuracy of ZNE and reduce redundant quantum circuit executions. Our extensive simulations and experiments on real quantum hardware reveal the following important properties: (i) deeper VQCs accumulate noise, degrading accuracy and increasing the number of quantum circuit executions; (ii) ZNE restores estimator fidelity when the folding level is chosen appropriately; and (iii) CMAB-guided folding cuts quantum circuit execution round trips by up to 40\%, bytes exchanged by up to 35\%, and end-to-end cost by up to 30\% under a 10~Mbps budget, with up to 6.9\% higher estimator fidelity (CIFAR-10, depth 3, noise band η=0.05), versus fixed-fold and grid-search ZNE. These results demonstrate substantial performance gains over existing noise mitigation methods, underscoring the effectiveness of our design in supporting robust noise mitigation for VQCs. The source code is also publicly released to support reproducibility.
Abstract Quantum computing has recently emerged as a novel paradigm for solving problems otherwise intractable on classical computers, yet the practical progress of quantum computers is severely impacted by noise, decoherence, and imperfect gate operations in Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. Specific to IBM Quantum hardware, imperfections due to readout error, gate errors, and device drift, which depends on time, resolves limits for the accuracy of outputs from our algorithms. The mitigation strategies currently used, for example, Measurement Error Mitigation (MEM), Zero Noise Extrapolation (ZNE), and Clifford Data Regression (CDR), offer improvement over raw, unmitigated outputs, but they are static and not dynamic; the reduction of noise in within an NISQ device is temporal and can vary in patterns that are non-zero. In addition to this, using the conventional methods provides inconsistent and suboptimal results.This study will provide enhanced reliability with respect to performing quantum computation on IBM Quantum hardware with a unique mitigation framework that is adaptive and computationally efficient for a high-fidelity output. The problem taken on here is the failure of existing error mitigation strategies to provide adaptive noise compensation, as they assume a statically-distributed error, despite the performance-related characteristics already being documented in regards to calibration drift and variation over time.To achieve this, we propose a Hybrid Adaptive Error Mitigation (HAEM) approach that includes baseline measurement error mitigation and an additional correction layer that utilizes realtime calibration information, along with lightweight machine learning models. The approach can be broken down into three steps: (i) perform standard measurement error mitigation to reduce classical readout noise, (ii) execute compact calibration circuits, such as Bell states, GHZ states and Clifford benchmarks to capture then current error profile of the device, and (iii) use a lightweight machine learning model (having been trained on historical and newest calibration data) to dynamically change the mitigation weights applied for the target quantum algorithm. All implementation is done using Qiskit Runtime to ensure low-latency execution, and we completed experiments on both Qiskit Aer noisy simulators and IBM Quantum devices.Initial results suggest HAEM improved the outputs of quantum algorithms' fidelity compared to the unmitigated runs and the baseline measurement error mitigation (MEM) runs. On the noisy simulators, HAEM increased fidelity from a raw performance of 0.65 to 0.87, nearly a 34% improvement. In fairer hardware-like scenarios, fidelity-on-average was persistently 12% better than MEM, with nearly equal time duration for the additional adaptive measurements. The adaptive aspect of HAEM consistently supported subsequent calibration cycles of the device and was effective to continue providing fidelity improvements despite the static mitigation performance degrading.To sum up, the proposed HAEM framework is a modern and viable alternative for error mitigation which brings together the benefits of baseline approaches with corrections that are driven by fixed-function error-corrective, adaptive learning. As both learning-based and standard baseline approaches can only achieve fixed levels of performance, HAEM, through its use of noise mitigation both at execution time and through correlating it with standard data, provides a route towards reliable quantum computations on current IBM hardware. HAEM also presents a contribution to the NISQ error-resilient landscape, and however it is intended that it will continue to improve future applications of hybrid workflows of quantum and classical computation where error mitigation and resilience is important.
Near-term quantum processors operate in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) region, where it is impractical to implement fault-tolerant error correction. Quantum Error Mitigation (QEM) provides a practical alternative, but most existing approaches rely on computationally intensive classical resources which are impractical to implement in embedded or edge-controlled systems. This work presents an adaptive, hardware-aware QEM framework designed for resource-constrained classical processors, demonstrated using a Raspberry Pi 5 as an edge controller for IBM Quantum hardware. A deep neural network predicts circuit fidelity and entropy from circuit and hardware features, enabling an online fuzzy-logic policy selector to choose among no mitigation, dynamical decoupling, and zero-noise extrapolation. Using real hardware feedback, an adaptive bias mechanism update policy was developed. The system operates without full-state simulation or offline recalibration and is evaluated on both randomized and benchmark-referenced circuits. Results show stable mitigation behaviour across depth regimes, primarily preventing fidelity degradation and selectively improving output similarity where mitigation is effective. This work demonstrates the feasibility of adaptive QEM deployment on classical edge devices under strict resource constraints.
Machine Learning-based quantum error mitigation (ML-QEM) has emerged as a promising approach for improving the performance of noisy quantum algorithms. However, existing ML-QEM methods often have restricted applicability to variational circuits and rely on inaccessible noiseless training data. In this work, we propose a practical ML-QEM protocol tailored to variational quantum algorithms, which generates training data by simulating (near-)Clifford circuits. This data is used for model selection and training, producing a mitigation model that can correct variational circuits with arbitrary parameters and transfer across different target Hamiltonians of similar structure. We benchmark the proposed method on the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) task for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Hamiltonian of up to n=12 qubits under various noise models, analyzing its effect on trainability and comparing its performance against standard Zero-Noise Extrapolation (ZNE). The results demonstrate consistent several-fold error suppression across all tested settings and superior performance over ZNE in the high-noise regime, providing evidence for the applicability of the proposed protocol to present-day NISQ processors.
Quantum Reinforcement Learning (QRL) integrates reinforcement learning with parameterized quantum circuits and is a promising approach to combinatorial optimization. On Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices, however, decoherence, gate imperfections, and measurement errors reduce policy quality and make learning less reliable. Existing error mitigation techniques are generally applied as fixed corrections that do not adapt to changing noise conditions or to the evolving state of training. This work presents Adaptive Policy-Guided Error Mitigation (APGEM) as a context-aware orchestration layer of the hybrid quantum-classical training loop that dynamically selects the most suitable mitigation strategy during QRL training. APGEM evaluates Zero-Noise Extrapolation (ZNE), Probabilistic Error Cancellation (PEC), Clifford Data Regression (CDR), and Readout Error Mitigation (REM) using policy-level indicators, including quantum-state fidelity, policy entropy, cumulative reward, and approximation ratio, and integrates the selected strategy directly into the reinforcement learning loop. The framework is evaluated on the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), a representative NP-hard problem in urban logistics, under a range of NISQ noise models and noise levels. APGEM consistently outperforms conventional static mitigation methods, reaches approximately 94% of the utility of an oracle strategy, maintains higher quantum-state fidelity as noise increases, and produces more stable learning behaviour throughout training. Ablation studies show that the framework learns context-aware mitigation policies that adapt to different noise environments and circuit execution conditions. These findings demonstrate that integrating adaptive error mitigation into the learning process substantially improves the robustness and reliability of QRL on NISQ hardware.
The execution of Variational Quantum Algorithms on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum hardware is severely impacted by hardware noise variations over time and decoherence. This work introduces an Adaptive Noise-Aware Variational Quantum Classifier (ANAVQC) that integrates Zero-Noise Extrapolation (ZNE) dynamically into the training loop to counter variations. The framework approximates the instantaneous depolarizing noise from calibration and adapts noise scaling and linear extrapolation to estimate noise-free expectation values at training. A two-qubit parameterized quantum circuit is built and simulated in MATLAB, with the inclusion of stochastic gradient descent coupled with parameter-shift-based gradients. The model is conditioned on a synthetic binary classification data under a time-varying depolarizing noise profile and exhibits improved convergence stability and classification accuracy over non-adaptive methods. The simulation results identify that adaptive ZNE increases model robustness against time-varying noise and offers a scalable route to reliable quantum machine learning on practical NISQ hardware. The current ANAVQC scheme is extendable to multi-qubit platforms and practical quantum backends for the purposes of future experimental testing.