Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Merkel, Seth, Proctor, Timothy, Ferracin, Samuele, Hines, Jordan, Barron, Samantha, Govia, Luke C. G., McKay, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05943
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910991128723456
author Merkel, Seth
Proctor, Timothy
Ferracin, Samuele
Hines, Jordan
Barron, Samantha
Govia, Luke C. G.
McKay, David
author_facet Merkel, Seth
Proctor, Timothy
Ferracin, Samuele
Hines, Jordan
Barron, Samantha
Govia, Luke C. G.
McKay, David
contents The goal of benchmarking is to determine how far the output of a noisy system is from its ideal behavior; this becomes exceedingly difficult for large quantum systems where classical simulations become intractable. A common approach is to turn to circuits comprised of elements of the Clifford group (e.g., CZ, CNOT, $π$ and $π/2$ gates), which probe quantum behavior but are nevertheless efficient to simulate classically. However, there is some concern that these circuits may overlook error sources that impact the larger Hilbert space. In this manuscript, we show that for a broad class of error models these concerns are unwarranted. In particular, we show that, for error models that admit noise tailoring by Pauli twirling, the diamond norm and fidelity of any generic circuit is well approximated by the fidelities of proxy circuits composed only of Clifford gates. We discuss methods for extracting the fidelities of these Clifford proxy circuits in a manner that is robust to errors in state preparation and measurement and demonstrate these methods in simulation and on IBM Quantum's fleet of deployed heron devices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_05943
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle When Clifford benchmarks are sufficient; estimating application performance with scalable proxy circuits
Merkel, Seth
Proctor, Timothy
Ferracin, Samuele
Hines, Jordan
Barron, Samantha
Govia, Luke C. G.
McKay, David
Quantum Physics
The goal of benchmarking is to determine how far the output of a noisy system is from its ideal behavior; this becomes exceedingly difficult for large quantum systems where classical simulations become intractable. A common approach is to turn to circuits comprised of elements of the Clifford group (e.g., CZ, CNOT, $π$ and $π/2$ gates), which probe quantum behavior but are nevertheless efficient to simulate classically. However, there is some concern that these circuits may overlook error sources that impact the larger Hilbert space. In this manuscript, we show that for a broad class of error models these concerns are unwarranted. In particular, we show that, for error models that admit noise tailoring by Pauli twirling, the diamond norm and fidelity of any generic circuit is well approximated by the fidelities of proxy circuits composed only of Clifford gates. We discuss methods for extracting the fidelities of these Clifford proxy circuits in a manner that is robust to errors in state preparation and measurement and demonstrate these methods in simulation and on IBM Quantum's fleet of deployed heron devices.
title When Clifford benchmarks are sufficient; estimating application performance with scalable proxy circuits
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05943