ABSTRACT We present a multifractal analysis of time series data obtained by repeatedly running a single‐qubit quantum circuit on IBM superconducting quantum computers in which the measurement outcomes are recorded as the number of zeros. We analyse empirical time series of repeated quantum circuit measurement outcomes from a superconducting NISQ processor, rather than eigenstates, wavefunctions or simulated quantum maps. We study shot‐aggregated measurement statistics (number of zeros per run over time) as a stochastic process influenced by hardware drift and measurement noise. By applying advanced signal processing techniques, including the wavelet leader method, we uncover strong multifractal behaviour in the output data. This finding indicates that the temporal fluctuations inherent to quantum circuit outputs are not purely random but exhibit complex scaling properties across multiple time scales. The multifractal nature of the signal suggests the possibility of tailoring filtering strategies that specifically target these scaling features to effectively mitigate noise in quantum computations. Our results not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamical properties of quantum systems under repeated measurement but also provide a promising avenue for improving noise reduction techniques in near‐term quantum devices.
ABSTRACT We present a multifractal analysis of time series data obtained by repeatedly running a single‐qubit quantum circuit on IBM superconducting quantum computers in which the measurement outcomes are recorded as the number of zeros. We analyse empirical time series of repeated quantum circuit measurement outcomes from a superconducting NISQ processor, rather than eigenstates, wavefunctions or simulated quantum maps. We study shot‐aggregated measurement statistics (number of zeros per run over time) as a stochastic process influenced by hardware drift and measurement noise. By applying advanced signal processing techniques, including the wavelet leader method, we uncover strong multifractal behaviour in the output data. This finding indicates that the temporal fluctuations inherent to quantum circuit outputs are not purely random but exhibit complex scaling properties across multiple time scales. The multifractal nature of the signal suggests the possibility of tailoring filtering strategies that specifically target these scaling features to effectively mitigate noise in quantum computations. Our results not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamical properties of quantum systems under repeated measurement but also provide a promising avenue for improving noise reduction techniques in near‐term quantum devices.
We present a multifractal analysis of time series data obtained by repeatedly running a single-qubit quantum circuit on IBM superconducting quantum computers, in which the measurement outcomes are recorded as the number of zeros. By applying advanced signal processing techniques, including the wavelet leader method and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis, we uncover strong multifractal behavior in the output data. This finding indicates that the temporal fluctuations inherent to quantum circuit outputs are not purely random but exhibit complex scaling properties across multiple time scales. The multifractal nature of the signal suggests the possibility of tailoring filtering strategies that specifically target these scaling features to effectively mitigate noise in quantum computations. Our results not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamical properties of quantum systems under repeated measurement but also provide a promising avenue for improving noise reduction techniques in near-term quantum devices.
Quantum computing holds the promise of transforming computational paradigms across science and engineering. But realizing potential on near term hardware demands on understanding of the noise processes that corrupt quantum circuit outputs. On superconducting processors, fragile qubits are continuously subjected to environmental disturbances including T1 relaxation, charge noise, and magnetic flux drift that cause measurement statistics to evolve in a nonstationary manner across repeated circuit executions, undermining the reliability of any result aggregated over a long experimental session. In this work, we treat the sequence of bitstring count outcomes from repeated executions of a fixed quantum circuit as a time series and conduct a systematic statistical investigation of its structure. The first contribution is constructing a predictive model of circuit output, demonstrating that future measurement outcomes can be forecast by exploiting temporal correlations in the execution record. We then extend the analysis to two circuits sharing the same physical qubit, examining cross-series dependencies and evaluating whether the drift behavior of one circuit can inform predictions about the other. The temporal structure of the signals is characterized in depth. The other contribution of this dissertation is to perform Wavelet-based multifractal analysis to reveal that quantum circuit outputs exhibit genuine multifractality. This is a hallmark of long range correlated, scale free processes rather than the simple Gaussian white noise assumed by standard error models. Complementary frequency-domain analysis identifies a residual 1/f noise component that persists after linear detrending, consistent with charge and flux noise mechanisms well documented in superconducting qubit literature. Motivated by these findings, The other contribution is to design and evaluate a suite of drift-mitigation filters including piecewise Huber regression, rolling median, smoothing spline, and Savitzky–Golay approaches under a rigorous chronological train/test protocol that mimics real operational deployment. The smoothing spline and median filter achieve near-zero corrected bias, while the rolling median emerges as the preferred solution for online, shot-by-shot correction due to its causal update structure and maximal robustness to impulsive hardware events. Taken together, our results characterize quantum circuit outputs as non-stationary, multifractal processes exhibiting long memory, seasonality, and inter-circuit causality, and establish a principled filtering framework for mitigating temporal bias drift in NISQ era quantum hardware.
Quantum computing promises a paradigm shift in computational power. However, a major challenge is mitigating the inherent noise and errors in quantum circuits. As quantum computers operate, their fragile qubits are highly susceptible to environmental disturbances, leading to errors that affect the outcomes of repeated circuit executions. Understanding and predicting these errors is crucial for improving the accuracy and reliability of quantum computing systems. In this work, we analyze and predict the output patterns of a single qubit quantum circuit by treating the results of repeated executions as a time series. Specifically, we collect measurement data from multiple runs of a quantum circuit and construct a time series from these observations. By training a predictive model, we aim to forecast future outcomes, providing insights into the error behavior of the quantum circuit. Additionally, we analyze time series data from two different circuits executed on the same qubit to investigate potential relationships and assess whether one dataset can be used to predict the other. Our findings reveal key characteristics of quantum circuit outputs, including stationarity, autocorrelation, seasonality, trends, linearity, and causality. The analysis highlights intriguing behaviors within the dataset. Furthermore, we evaluate multiple time series prediction methods and determine that XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting) outperforms other approaches, demonstrating its effectiveness in accurately predicting quantum computing outputs in subsequent runs.
Abstract Quantum utility is severely limited in superconducting quantum hardware until now by the modest number of qubits and the relatively high level of control and readout errors, due to the intentional coupling with the external environment required for manipulation and readout of the qubit states. Practical applications in the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era rely on Quantum Error Mitigation (QEM) techniques, which are able to improve the accuracy of the expectation values of quantum observables by implementing classical post‐processing analysis from an ensemble of repeated noisy quantum circuit runs. In this work, a recent QEM technique that uses Fuzzy C‐Means (FCM) clustering to specifically identify measurement error patterns is focused. For the first time, a proof‐of‐principle validation of the technique on a two‐qubit register, obtained as a subset of a real NISQ five‐qubit superconducting quantum processor based on transmon qubits is reported. It is demonstrated that the FCM‐based QEM technique allows for reasonable improvement of the expectation values of single‐ and two‐qubit gates‐based quantum circuits, without necessarily invoking state‐of‐the‐art coherence, gate, and readout fidelities.
Quantum devices in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era are highly susceptible to different types of quantum noise, which directly impact the reliability of experimental results. This work provides a characterization of error behavior arising from quantum noises on IBM's superconducting quantum processor, offering practical insights for algorithm design, benchmarking, and error-mitigation strategies on a real superconducting quantum processor in the NISQ era. The study begins with the measurement of the basis state, without applying any gate, to quantify state-preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors. Additionally, the errors are further quantified due to the application of single-qubit Pauli-X, two-qubit CNOT gate and other multi-qubit Controlled-X gates. Each circuit was executed with 1024 shots, and the percentage error between the expected and observed outputs was computed. The results show that the single-qubit Pauli-X gate exhibits relatively low errors in comparison with the two-qubit CNOT gate, whereas other multi-qubit Controlled-X gates lead to significantly higher deviations. This work also analyzes the noise effect of a fourqubit Controlled-X gate being implemented using a three-qubit Controlled-X gate with an extra auxiliary qubit, and the result shows a significant reduction in the error rate.
We experimentally study error mitigation and finite-shot sampling on superconducting quantum hardware under a constrained execution budget. The study combines calibration-aware qubit selection, circuit-depth scaling, zero-noise extrapolation, dynamical decoupling, readout-error mitigation, and repeated-shot estimation on an IBM Quantum processor. Experiments are organized across ideal simulation, noise-model simulation, and physical-device execution to separate sampling uncertainty from device-induced error. We investigate how mitigation performance changes with circuit depth, effective noise scale, qubit connectivity, and measurement budget, and quantify accuracy using expectation-value error, mean-squared error, statistical uncertainty, and mitigation gain. A fixed hardware-execution budget is used to evaluate shot allocation strategies and repeated measurements without relying on unlimited sampling. The resulting analysis provides a hardware-aware characterization of when mitigation improves expectation-value estimation and when finite-shot fluctuations offset the benefit of additional mitigation overhead. The implementation uses contemporary Qiskit and IBM Quantum Runtime workflows and is designed to provide reproducible experimental evidence for error-mitigation studies on current quantum processors.