Improving readout in quantum simulations with repetition codes

Near term quantum computers suffer from the presence of different noise sources. In order to mitigate for this effect and acquire results with significantly better accuracy, there is the urge of designing efficient error correction or error mitigation schemes. The cost of such techniques is usually high in terms of resource requirements, either in hardware or at the algorithmic level. In this work, we follow a pragmatic approach and we use repetition codes as scalable schemes with the potential to provide more accurate solutions to problems of interest in quantum chemistry and physics. We investigate different repetition code layouts and we propose a circular repetition scheme with connectivity requirements that are native on IBM Quantum hardware. We showcase our approach in multiple IBM Quantum devices and validate our results using a simplified theoretical noise model. We highlight the effect of using the proposed scheme in an electronic structure variational quantum eigensolver calculation and in the simulation of time evolution for a quantum Ising model.

Automated summary

This article discusses the importance of implementing error correction or error mitigation schemes to address the noise issues in near term quantum computers. The proposed solution is to use repetition codes with a circular repetition scheme, and its feasibility is validated on IBM Quantum hardware.