Limitations of probabilistic error cancellation for open dynamics beyond sampling overhead
File(s)PhysRevA.109.012431.pdf (1.03 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Ma, Yue
Kim, MS
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Quantum simulation of dynamics is an important goal in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era, within which quantum error mitigation may be a viable path towards modifying or eliminating the effects of noise. Most studies on quantum error mitigation have focused on the resource cost due to its exponential scaling in the circuit depth. Methods such as probabilistic error cancellation rely on discretizing the evolution into finite time steps and applying the mitigation layer after each time step, modifying only the noise part without any Hamiltonian dependence. This may lead to Trotter-like errors in the simulation results even if the error mitigation is implemented ideally, which means that the number of samples is taken as infinite. Here we analyze the aforementioned errors which have been largely neglected before. We show that they are determined by the commutating relations between the superoperators of the unitary part, the device noise part, and the noise part of the open dynamics to be simulated. We include both digital quantum simulation and analog quantum simulation setups and consider defining the ideal error mitigation map both by exactly inverting the noise channel and by approximating it to first order in the time step. We use single-qubit toy models to numerically demonstrate our findings. Our results illustrate fundamental limitations of applying probabilistic error cancellation in a stepwise manner to continuous dynamics, thus motivating the investigations of truly time-continuous error cancellation methods.
Date Issued
2024-01
Date Acceptance
2023-12-19
Citation
Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2024, 109 (1)
ISSN
1050-2947
Publisher
American Physical Society
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
Volume
109
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
License URL
Identifier
https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.109.012431
Subjects
Optics
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physics, Atomic, Molecular & Chemical
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
012431
Date Publish Online
2024-01-25