Better Together: IBM Researchers Cut Sampling Demands 63-Fold by Combining Quantum Error Detection And Mitigation

Insider Brief

• IBM researchers combined quantum error detection with error mitigation in an experiment that reduced the estimated sampling overhead by as much as 63 times compared with mitigation alone.
• The approach uses error-detecting checks to discard runs with identifiable faults, then applies probabilistic error cancellation to errors that escape detection.
• The results suggest error mitigation may continue to support quantum computations after logical qubits arrive, although the study is a preprint and the 63-fold figure represents inferred sampling overhead rather than total runtime.
• Image: IBM

Quantum error correction may not simply replace error mitigation as quantum computers improve. In fact, the two methods could instead work together to make reliable computations possible with fewer resources, according to an IBM study.

IBM researchers combined an error-detection protocol with a statistical error-mitigation technique and tested the approach on a superconducting quantum processor. The hybrid method reproduced the expected results of a small physics simulation while reducing the estimated sampling overhead by as much as 63 times compared with error mitigation alone.

The results add experimental support to the idea that quantum error mitigation and quantum error correction should be viewed as parts of a continuum rather than tools belonging to separate eras of quantum computing, according to an IBM research blog post.