Papers for
quantum hardware engineers
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Learning sparse control patterns lowers cost of quantum state preparation
Reducing the Cost of Qudit State Preparation by Learning a Sparse Structure for SNAP Gates
Abstract: Preparing quantum states in bosonic qudits with SNAP--Displacement sequences requires both optimizing the gate parameters and deciding which Fock levels should be controlled by each SNAP gate. A fully parameterized ansatz assigns an independent phase to every Fock level in every gate, leading to a number of phases that grows steeply. This constitutes a problem for short to medium term systems as controlling many phases requires complex control pulses which are subject to increased control errors. Previous work reduced this cost by restricting the trainable phases to predefined sparse patterns, such as a diagonal or a grid, which however may not be optimal for a specific target state. In this work, we address this limitation by introducing a method that learns which phases are needed together with their values, using a differentiable mask. A sparsity penalty encourages the removal of unnecessary phases, while temperature annealing gradually turns the masks into binary decisions. We compare the proposed method with fully parameterized and predefined sparse ansatzes on Fourier and Haar-random target states. The evaluation considers both the minimum number of phases required to reach different infidelity thresholds and the overall trade-off between fidelity and phases required, measured through Pareto frontiers and hypervolume. The results show that learning the location of the phases together with their values provides competitive or improved fidelity--resource trade-offs, although the advantage depends on the target state and qudit dimension.
Quantum circuits achieve exact Ramanujan expansion with few resources
Ramanujan quantum expanders from the Weil representation
Abstract: For every odd prime power $q$ and $D=q+1$, we construct an infinite family of Ramanujan quantum expanders of degree $D$. The construction transfers Morgenstern's Ramanujan Cayley graphs on $\operatorname{PSL}_2(\mathbb{F}_{p})$ for $p$ which is an even power of $q$, through the odd irreducible subrepresentation of the Weil representation of $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_{p})$. For a quantum expander of dimension $N$, our implementation uses $O(\log^2 N)$ elementary gates, and $O(\log N)$ ancilla qudits, using a fixed finite gate set depending on $q$. An advantage compared to the previous work of Iyer, Jain, Jordan, and Somma (FOCS 2026) is that assuming the quantum circuit is implemented exactly, we satisfy the $2\sqrt{D-1}/D$ singular value bound exactly without any additive error.
Dissipative quantum reservoirs model complex quantum system responses
Digital Twin Modeling of Quantum Dynamical Systems: Dissipative Quantum Reservoir Computing
Abstract: Modeling the response of driven many-body quantum systems from input--output data is difficult: the dynamics are nonlinear, history dependent, and expensive to simulate as system size grows. A paradigmatic case is High-Harmonic Generation~(HHG), where a strong field drives a medium to emit radiation that is highly sensitive to the drive and encodes long-range temporal correlations. We introduce a dissipative quantum reservoir computing~(DQRC) framework that builds a digital twin of such a system, learning its input--output map directly from data while the reservoir---itself a small open quantum system---stays fixed and only a classical readout is trained. We show that a minimal single-qubit reservoir reproduces the HHG response of a substantially larger Ising spin chain, and on a representative benchmark matches and on several metrics surpasses previously reported temporal convolutional and Kolmogorov--Arnold-network models, while using a simpler, physically realizable system. A single fixed reservoir further generalizes across a broad range of drives, indicating that it learns a shared physical response structure rather than memorizing trajectories. These results establish dissipative quantum reservoirs as compact, physically grounded digital twins for nonlinear, memory-dependent quantum dynamics. Code is available at \href{https://github.com/AI-and-Quantum-Computing/DQuRC}{https://github.com/AI-and-Quantum-Computing/DQuRC}.
Quantum fidelity calibration improves single-circuit QGAN image generation
Quantum Fidelity Landscape-Guided Prior Calibration for Single-Circuit QGAN Image Generation
Abstract: Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks (QGANs) have emerged as representative generative models in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era and have attracted increasing attention in quantum machine learning. However, most existing QGAN methods rely on patch-based decomposition strategies, which weaken the global consistency of generated images and increase quantum resource overhead. In this work, we investigate a simpler approach: pixel-level, end-to-end image generation using a single-quantum-circuit QGAN. By analyzing the structural matching relationship between the quantum prior and the target data distribution in Hilbert space, we provide a new theoretical perspective for understanding the training behavior of naive end-to-end QGANs. Specifically, we introduce the Quantum Fidelity Landscape (QFL), defined as the pairwise-fidelity structure induced by an ensemble of quantum states and preserved under shared unitary transformations of the quantum generation process. We show that, under a fixed Lipschitz readout, this invariant imposes a one-sided bound on decoded sample separation, motivating calibration of the prior-induced QFL before adversarial training. To validate this theoretical insight, we propose BasicQGAN, a QGAN framework incorporating quantum prior calibration. Before adversarial optimization, BasicQGAN aligns the prior-induced QFL with the data-induced QFL. Experimental results on small-scale grayscale image datasets show that BasicQGAN achieves stable and effective end-to-end pixel-level image generation while requiring fewer qubits and trainable parameters than representative patch-based quantum generators. Furthermore, experiments with different initial quantum-state ensembles show that QFL-calibrated ensembles achieve better generative performance.
Optimal ways to prepare quantum ground states with fewer queries
Optimal Query Complexity for Ground-State Preparation
Abstract: We determine the optimal query complexity of ground-state preparation to trace-distance error $\varepsilon$ when an energy threshold in the spectral gap is known. Let $U_H$ be an $α$-block-encoding of a Hamiltonian with unique ground state $|ψ_0\rangle$, and suppose $|\langleψ_0|U_I|0\rangle|\geγ$ for a state-preparation oracle $U_I$. The threshold lies at least $Δ/2$ above the ground-state energy and at least $Δ/2$ below every excited-state energy. We give two algorithms that prepare a state within trace distance $\varepsilon$ of the ground state. One uses $O((α/Δ)(γ^{-1}+\log(1/\varepsilon)))$ calls to $U_H$ in expectation; the other uses $O((α/(γΔ))\log(1/\varepsilon))$ calls to $U_H$ in the worst case. We prove a lower bound matching the expected query count; the corresponding worst-case lower bound follows from Somma and de Wolf [SdW26]. The respective bounds on calls to $U_I$ are $O(1/γ)$ in expectation and $O(γ^{-1}\log(1/\varepsilon))$ in the worst case. On $(N+1)$-dimensional systems, these $U_I$ bounds are also optimal when the expected or worst-case count of $U_H$ calls, respectively, is $o((α/Δ)\sqrt N)$. Both algorithms use a constant-accuracy spectral filter to construct a purifier, which we then sequentially compose during amplitude amplification to prepare a state with constant overlap with the ground state. The expected-query algorithm repeats the preparation followed by one high-accuracy spectral filter until success. The worst-case algorithm uses filters of increasing accuracy and limits the total number of queries.
Canonical logical bases improve qubit error-correcting code efficiency
Low-Weight Canonical Logical Bases from Pair-Partition Codes
Abstract: We construct complete canonical logical bases for qubit CSS codes by assigning quaternary coefficients to binary circulant permutation matrix pair-partition (CPM-PP) checks, constructing and normalizing logical representatives, and expanding the result into binary matrices. When the two check systems have invertible submatrices on disjoint column sets, cofactor representatives are canonically paired by the inverse of a single pairing polynomial. The resulting pairs span the entire logical space. When the pairing polynomial is a cyclic-shift monomial with coefficient one, normalization preserves the binary weights of the representatives. We state the construction for general block dimensions and CPM size, work through a corresponding example, and report the parameters, check ranks, and basis weights of seven binary codes. Representative examples have parameters $[[320,80,14]]$, $[[448,112,18]]$, and $[[2048,512,24]]$. All three have maximum check weight 10 on both the X and Z sides. Their canonical logical representatives have binary weights 25, 27, and 27, respectively, on both the X and Z sides.
Quantum state fidelity estimated with fewer measurements than before
Sublinear Copies Suffice for Fidelity Estimation with Pauli Measurements
Abstract: We present a protocol that estimates the quantum fidelity, up to precision $\varepsilon$, between a known target state and unknown lab-prepared state with sublinear, $o(d^{0.9908}/\varepsilon^2)$, number of Pauli basis measurements.
Complexity varies in compiling Clifford operations for quantum circuits
Computational Complexity of Clifford Template Compilation: Are Quantum Computers Useful for Compiling Quantum Circuits?
Abstract: A Clifford template is a finite ordered family of repeatable Clifford operations, and an instantiation specifies how many times each operation is applied. The Clifford template compilation problem asks how to choose these repetition numbers so that the template realizes a target transformation of Pauli operators. This problem arises, for example, when searching for logical operations in quantum error correction using only Clifford operations permitted by physical or fault-tolerance constraints. Although forward Clifford dynamics is efficiently classically simulable, this inverse problem has sharp complexity transitions. For commuting templates with unrestricted integer exponents, feasibility lies in $\mathrm{NP}\cap\mathrm{BQP}$ and a constructive quantum algorithm returns a particular solution together with the full exponent-relation lattice; already at $k=1$, recovering the repetition number contains finite-field discrete logarithm over $\mathbb{F}_{2^r}^{\times}$. In general, restricting every exponent to $\{0,1\}$ removes the Abelian-group closure and makes feasibility NP-complete for variable $k$, even for exactly commuting CNOT-only operations and X-type Paulis. For commuting self-inverse Clifford actions, both binary feasibility and recovery of one solution are classically polynomial-time solvable, but imposing a bound on the total repetition count is NP-complete, even for CNOT-only operations. These results reveal a rich complexity landscape within Clifford template compilation, spanning classically tractable cases, problems admitting quantum polynomial-time algorithms, and NP-complete variants.
Anticoncentration bounds support quantum advantage in boson sampling
Anticoncentration of Complex Gaussian Hafnians
Abstract: Let $G_{2n}$ be a complex symmetric random matrix whose entries above the diagonal are independent standard circular complex Gaussians, and let $H_n=\operatorname{haf}(G_{2n})$. We prove the uniform shifted anticoncentration bound $$ \Pr\!\left( \left| \frac{H_n}{\sqrt{(2n-1)!!}}-z \right| \le \varepsilon \right) \le 2\sqrt{\frac nπ}\,\varepsilon^2 $$ for every $z\in\mathbb C$ and $\varepsilon>0$. This establishes a local anticoncentration property that supports hardness arguments for quantum advantage in Gaussian boson sampling.
Simulation based method infers quantum system parameters efficiently
Simulation-Based Quantum System Inference with Neural Posterior Estimation
Abstract: Models of quantum systems faithfully map system parameters to observations, but the inverse problem of parameter inference from measurement data presents a fundamental challenge: computationally intractable likelihoods due to an exponentially large Hilbert space. Here, we introduce simulation-based quantum system inference, a unified, likelihood-free framework that learns parameter posteriors directly from classical simulation data. The central idea is to pair polynomial-cost classical simulators, such as Pauli propagation and tensor networks, with normalizing flows or other neural density estimators for accurate, reusable inference. A single model, trained once, maps any new measurement record to its posterior in one forward pass---turning per-experiment inference into a fixed, up-front cost. We numerically demonstrate the framework's versatility across Pauli noise learning, quantum error mitigation, quantum state tomography, and Hamiltonian learning, with examples involving 81-qubit shallow circuits and 735-parameter inference. In each case, the approach yields accurate estimates of identifiable parameters, while posterior uncertainty provides additional diagnostics of non-identifiability and indicates where further characterization is needed. Our framework reduces data-acquisition requirements in quantum experiments and accelerates parameter inference, providing a practical route to characterizing and improving large-scale quantum systems.
Information leakage controls privacy in multi-user quantum cloud systems
Coherence Rather Than Error Rate Governs Privacy in Multi-Tenant Quantum Computing
Abstract: Multi-tenant computing enables providers of commercial cloud quantum processors to rent disjoint sectors of a device to independent users. Average gate error, which cloud quantum computing providers report, does not determine how much one tenant learns about another. We propose an information-theoretic notion of information leakage across co-tenancy boundaries stemming from quantum state distinguishability. We measure this leakage on commercially-available 156-qubit (IBM Kingston) and 20-qubit (IQM Garnet) devices. Boundaries with identical benchmarked error can offer significantly different amount of information leakage because standard reported measures of error are blind to coherent-versus-stochastic nature of the error while the proposed notion of information leakage is not. A uniform Pauli randomisation implemented over the victim's whole register is used as a defence mechanism to reduce the information leakage to zero. The defence theoretically does not incur a fidelity cost, but the experiments show a non-trivial degradation caused by accumulation of errors. We provide a specific call-for-action to the providers of quantum cloud computing to report information leakage in addition to standard error rates in their device datasheet to enable users to compute privacy and security risks prior to engagement with the device.
Quantum compiler boosts chiplet simulations of qubit interactions
QBX: A Compiler for 2-local Qubit Hamiltonian Simulation on Quantum Chiplets
Abstract: 2-local qubit Hamiltonian simulation, a fundamental task in quantum computing, is widely applied in various applications. This paper presents QBX, the first quantum compiler designed for 2-local qubit Hamiltonian simulation on quantum chiplet architectures. Existing general-purpose quantum compilers for chiplet architectures target quantum programs at the gate level and miss optimizations requiring high-level semantics of Hamiltonian simulation. Conversely, existing domain-specific compilers for Hamiltonian simulation are designed for monolithic architectures, and their limited scalability and inability to adapt to the heterogeneity of chiplet architectures lead to sub-optimal circuit outputs. QBX implements a scalable hierarchical approach to reduce both the amount and distance of cross-chiplet communications. It integrates the highway mechanism, a chiplet-oriented solution for efficient long-range qubit communication, to diminish cross-chiplet interaction costs. Furthermore, QBX efficiently aggregates 2-local Pauli strings into multi-target controlled gates, harnessing highways for deep optimization. Our evaluations show that QBX markedly outperforms both general-purpose and domain-specific compilers in circuit depth and operation count, while scaling to much larger 2-local Hamiltonian simulations.
Quantum state learning improves fidelity using terminal-register certification
Terminal-Register Certification for Finite-Measurement Learning of Multiscale Quantum States
Abstract: Structured quantum-state learning not only depends on an expressive ansatz but also on an operational certificate that stays meaningful with finite measurements and imperfect implementation. We study pure one dimensional states learning by an inverse binary multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA). In the learning procedure, the qubits removed during coarse graining are controlled coherently and measured together at the terminal register. We confirm that an ideal sequential and terminal measurement schedule delivers the same complete bit string distribution under matched causal operations, while normalized postselection can amplify perturbations inversely with prefix acceptance. A noise aware theorem introduces an individual calibrated total variation implementation budget to the finite shot certificate. The protocol is estimated on an open boundary transverse field Ising ground state. A frozen 8-qubit schedule using $560$ million simulated training measurements per run achieves fidelity above $0.99$ in all $60$ held-out runs, with a mean fidelity of $0.996886$. 1080 circuit-noise cells and 6480 confidence-coverage rows are covered by fixed-circuit robustness validation without a locked soundness violation. We then address architectural fairness at $n=16$ using three new studies. In a 120-run exact-gradient multistart diagnostic, MERA has higher fidelity in 58/60 paired restarts and lower long-range error in 60/60, although no run met the prespecified stationarity criterion. Finally, a causal cone-complete, parameter matched local circuit achieves $2.62\times$ greater aggregate gate exposure yet loses all 30 paired comparisons in fidelity, long-range error, energy, and entropy.
Entangled qubits may suffer strong joint noise challenging quantum computers
The Fully Depolarizing Noise Conjecture for Entangled Physical States: A Twenty-Year Perspective
Abstract: In this paper I revisit my 2006 conjecture on correlated errors in entangled physical qubits, originally proposed as a potential obstruction to quantum fault tolerance. The conjecture asserts that, in any physical implementation of a quantum computer, the effective noise channel acting on entangled physical qubits contains a joint fully depolarizing component, with a rate comparable to that of two-qubit gate errors. This hypothesized structural constraint goes beyond standard noise models and, if valid, would pose a significant challenge to scalable quantum fault tolerance. The conjecture remains open, but recent advances in experimental quantum computing bring it within reach of empirical testing on current devices. I also discuss two related directions in my critical study of quantum computation: the role of noise sensitivity and computational complexity in noisy intermediate-scale quantum systems, and the statistical analysis of experimental claims of quantum advantage. Finally, since this paper is written for a volume honoring Yuri Gurevich, I include some reflections on the ways in which my scientific and personal trajectory became intertwined with Yuri's.
Quantum software components unify multiple frameworks and engines
NxM-Version Programming for Quantum Software: High-Level Components across Frameworks and Engines
Abstract: Quantum computing has in recent years evolved from a purely theoretical field to an active area in both academia and industry. As a result, Quantum Software Engineering has emerged as an area that aims to organize the process of building, testing, and running quantum software. However, writing quantum software still requires programming with quantum gates and qubits, as well as knowledge specific to quantum software frameworks such as Qiskit, Cirq, Qrisp, pyQuil and PennyLane, each of which reaches quantum hardware through its own toolchain. We present Quanifi, which packages the high-level routines of these frameworks as components on the Apache NiFi dataflow canvas. The components exchange circuits as OpenQASM 2.0, so a circuit built by one framework can be executed by another. This allows for two types of redundancy: several frameworks implement the same algorithm, and several engines (simulators or real hardware) execute the same circuit. We describe N$\times$M program execution, which crosses the two: a single NiFi flow runs each of the $N$ implementations on each of the $M$ engines, and because every result is labelled with its implementation and its engine, a disagreement can be linked to an implementation, to an engine, or to a single implementation-engine pair. We ran Grover's algorithm built by three frameworks on three quantum computers from IBM, IQM and Quantum Inspire, and a matrix of three adder builders on one IQM device reached through two routes. N$\times$M execution helped us discover three real defects: an incorrect gate-set declaration in the Quantum Inspire adapter, execution consistent with negated $R_x$ angles on Tuna-17, and circuit modification through Open Quantum. The latter two returned wrong answers without reporting an error. We reported all three defects and Open Quantum's provider confirmed and fixed its QASM parsing defect.
Algorithmic traces improve language models in quantum circuit synthesis
AG-CoT: Verified Algorithmic Traces for LLM Program Synthesis on Clifford Circuits
Abstract: Scientific code generation can produce executable programs that fail to compute the intended scientific object. We study this problem in language-model synthesis of Clifford circuits, which prepare the stabilizer states used in quantum error correction and admit exact classical verification. In our target-conditioned framework, each target is given as compact signed stabilizer generators, and an exact verifier checks the generated OpenQASM circuits. We supervise models with Aaronson-Gottesman chain-of-thought (AG-CoT) traces checked by the verifier, and continue training on model generations that the verifier accepts. Across two independently trained model families (3B and 7B), AG-CoT supervision multiplies greedy-decode state-equivalence accuracy by four to six times over circuit-only baselines, and verifier-filtered continuation training adds a further consistent gain atop both. A complementary 32B study shows that supervised models achieve near-perfect syntax and Clifford validity while the strongest direct model reaches 6.14% state equivalence per target, rising to over 10% under verifier-guided selection with multiple candidates. These results show that algorithmic trace supervision gives a large, statistically significant gain in both model families and that verifier-filtered continuation adds a further repeated gain. The persistent gap between Clifford validity and state equivalence confirms that exact verification is necessary: a circuit can be syntactically and physically valid yet prepare the wrong quantum state.
Measuring complexity of quantum experiments for classical simulation
Probing the classical complexity of quantum dynamics experiments
Abstract: A confluence of recent works has shown that many quantum circuits and dynamics are efficiently simulable by classical algorithms that track local information, even when conventional complexity measures such as the entanglement and magic are high. Here, we introduce a novel measure of complexity, the reactivity, to capture this new method of classical attack. Unlike conventional complexity measures, the reactivity does not capture a property of a quantum state or operator in isolation, but rather a quantum experiment as a whole. We provide numerical and rigorous evidence that quantum experiments with low reactivity are simple by a host of measures: they are efficient to classically simulate, learn, and fast-forward. This motivates the search for quantum experiments with high reactivity, which may evade these simplistic features. To this end, we introduce easily implementable experimental protocols---dubbed Pauli path spectroscopy---that allow one to efficiently measure the reactivity of any quantum experiment of interest. Our protocols are applicable even when the experiment itself is beyond the reach of classical simulation.
New methods enable efficient quantum error correction codes and magic state preparation
Sipser-Spielman meets Dijkgraaf-Witten: non-Abelian qLDPC codes via twisted sheaf gauge theory and almost-constant-overhead magic state fountain
Abstract: Sipser-Spielman codes and Dijkgraaf-Witten twisted gauge theories are among the most profound ideas in the last few decades in the areas of computer science and mathematical physics respectively. This work unifies them in the same framework using the language of sheaf cohomology, and produces a new framework of twisted sheaf guage theories describing a class of quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes with non-Abelian $D_4$ topological order. The corresponding twisted qLDPC code can be obtained from gauging a new type of 0-form sub-complex $\mathbb{Z}_2^3$ symmetry from a qLDPC code defined on a sheaf complex, and can be interpreted as a topological defect network of non-Abelain $D_4$ patches glued together with proper gapped interfaces. As an application, one can use this to realize a \textit{magic state fountain} via the gauging measurement of the addressable logical CZ gates as 0-form subcomplex symmetries in a 2D hypergraph-product on a sheaf complex. This includes a scheme of subdividing an arbitrary constant-rate 2D hypergraph-product code with parameter $[[n,Θ(n), Ω(n^{1/2})]]$ into a quantum sheaf code which allows preparation of $Θ(n^{1/2})$ in parallel, equivalent to the recent geometric construction using the code-to-manifold mapping in (arXiv:2601.06736). Moreover, using the recent sheaf complex and algebraic code constructions by Golowich-Tamo-Zhu (arXiv:2609.27801) with parameter $[[n,Θ(n^{1-ε}), Ω(n^{(1-ε)/2})]]$ for arbitrary small $ε$, one can prepare $Θ(n^{1-ε})$ CZ magic states in parallel and hence achieve an almost-constant magic rate.
Reinforcement learning improves quantum neural network training speed and accuracy
Modeling quantum neural network gradient with reinforcement learning
Abstract: Training quantum neural networks (QNNs) on near-term hardware remains hampered by two compounding difficulties: the exponential vanishing of gradient variance known as the barren plateau, and the $\mathcal{O}(L \cdot 2^n)$ time and memory cost of differentiating through an $n$-qubit, $L$-layer circuit. We propose RLQ-Grad, a reinforcement-learning-based optimizer in which a classical policy $π_φ$ (a spectrally-normalized PPO agent) learns to propose parameter updates directly, conditioned on the QNN's current parameters, loss, accuracy, and previous update. Because the surrogate gradient is emitted by a classical network rather than obtained by differentiating through the unitary $U(θ)$, its variance is not constrained by the barren plateau concentration bound, and its cost scales with the number of trainable parameters rather than the Hilbert-space dimension. We prove these properties formally and verify them on a hardware-efficient ansatz across four supervised benchmarks with up to $n=20$ qubits. RLQ-Grad preserves a near-flat gradient-variance curve where backpropagation, parameter-shift, and adjoint differentiation decay by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. Accounting for the full training pipeline (PPO rollouts, actor-critic updates, and optimizer states), RLQ-Grad needs under 2 MB of memory and runs $2490\times$, $7876\times$, and $673\times$ faster per iteration than these three methods at $n=20$. It improves top-1 accuracy by up to $+10\%$ over gradient-based baselines on circuits of up to 12 qubits, and matches dedicated barren plateau mitigation methods on CIFAR-10 at 14 to 20 qubits, where evolutionary and gradient-free optimizers collapse to chance.
Non-Abelian quantum codes achieve high error protection and new magic states
Non-Abelian sheaf quantum LDPC codes: good and magical
Abstract: Non-Abelian quantum codes connect quantum error correction, phases of matter, and computational resources. In this work, we develop a general framework for constructing non-Abelian quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes by gauging sheaf codes via cup products and use it to obtain families with constant encoding rate and linear distance. We resolve the coupled logical constraints using explicit representatives to characterize the full gauged code space. We provide a fundamental treatment of code distance based on the general Knill--Laflamme condition and combine expansion with cleaning to establish protection against arbitrary low-weight errors. We further construct an almost-good family whose entire code space exhibits long-range magic. Gauging and ungauging also enable logical Clifford measurements that prepare encoded magic states. These results extend good qLDPC codes beyond the Pauli stabilizer setting and provide a concrete foundation for exploring non-Abelian phases beyond geometric locality and pursuing the no low-energy trivial magic conjecture.
Magic-state cultivation runtime speeds quantum fault-tolerant computing
MagiCFirm: A Runtime for Magic-State Cultivation with Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design
Abstract: Magic-state cultivation offers a promising alternative for lowering the cost of non-Clifford operations in fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). However, realizing cultivation in practice exposes two challenges: (i) the lack of an open-source classical runtime layer between logical software and physical control, and (ii) the latency constraints on protocol-specific decisions that determine magic-state readiness. To address these challenges, we adopt an algorithm--hardware co-design approach. At the algorithm level, we develop a two-stage early-escape scheme that identifies an informative subset of detectors offline, constructs a compact decoding problem, and performs partial decoding in parallel with complete decoding at runtime, allowing high-confidence attempts to advance before full decoding completes. At the hardware level, we present MagiCFirm, a configurable runtime that combines offline-compiled microprograms with dedicated datapaths for detector construction, event processing, and protocol control, enabling end-to-end execution of magic-state cultivation. Across evaluated configurations, MagiCFirm reduces wall-clock magic-state preparation time by up to 39.3% at matched logical error rate. For a representative magic-state-bound workload, this translates to an estimated 11% reduction in overall application runtime.
Quantum circuit design speeds up solving equations in any finite field
A Quantum Circuit for Gaussian Elimination
Abstract: A quantum circuit for Gaussian elimination is developed in this work. While previous quantum implementations of Gaussian elimination were restricted to $\mathrm{GF}(2)$, the proposed design is generalized to any finite field. Compared with previous works in $\mathrm{GF}(2)$, the developed circuit achieves garbage-free construction while retaining the best known asymptotic Toffoli depth up to logarithmic factors.
Cubical sheaf complexes enable new efficient quantum error correcting codes
Cubical Sheaf Complexes with Constant Expansion with Applications to Asymptotically Good qLTCs
Abstract: For every fixed integers $r \ge 4$ and $2 \le k \le r-2$, we construct $r$-dimensional cubical sheaf complexes whose degree-$k$ CSS codes have positive constant rate, linear distance, and constant soundness, with bounded row and column weights. Taking $r=4$ and $k=2$ gives a family of asymptotically good binary qLTCs. At the core of our construction is a uniform product-expansion theorem for explicit Reed-Solomon codes on norm-one evaluation sets. The key point is that the expansion constant stays bounded away from zero as the local code lengths grow. We place these codes on arithmetic cubical complexes, obtaining constant local expansion for both the resulting sheaf and its dual. Together with the local-to-global framework of Dinur, Lin, and Vidick (FOCS 2024) and sheaf duality, this gives linear distance and constant soundness, while an asymmetric choice of local code dimensions gives positive rate. The resulting codes are explicit and polynomial-time computable.
Real-time flux correction boosts superconducting quantum gate accuracy
Precision and resource scaling of real-time flux distortion compensation for superconducting quantum control
Abstract: Real-time waveform generation supports dynamic quantum circuits without pre-storing complete waveforms for every execution path. However, long-lived distortions in flux-control lines degrade gate fidelity, requiring compensation to account for the actual pulse history. A frequency-domain inversion and time-domain fitting method is proposed for resource-efficient real-time flux distortion compensation. The method fits the reconstructed compensation impulse response with a compact hybrid infinite impulse response (IIR) and finite impulse response (FIR) filter. Look-ahead parallelization enables this filter to process synthesized waveforms at 1.2GSa/s on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Two-qubit cross-entropy benchmarking shows that real-time IIR filtering achieves a median controlled-Z Pauli fidelity close to the software-reference value of 99.57%. Numerical analysis and FPGA synthesis indicate approximately logarithmic growth in hardware resource use with compensation timescale. Extending compensation from microsecond to hundred-microsecond timescales increases look-up table (LUT) and digital signal processing (DSP) resource use by only about 14% and 4%, respectively, while maintaining a relative arithmetic error below $10^{-4}$. This work provides a scalable hardware foundation for high-fidelity flux control in dynamic superconducting quantum circuits.
Good quantum codes enable new transversal controlled Z logical gates
Transversal non-Clifford gates on good quantum locally testable codes
Abstract: We achieve nontrivial transversal logical multi-controlled-$Z$ gates with asymptotically optimal parameters simultaneously on quantum low-density parity check codes and quantum locally testable codes, by applying the gate framework of [arXiv:2604.01874] to the recent good qLTC construction of [arXiv:2609.20780]. To this end, we use the covering space method to construct a nonzero cup product pairing on a finite arithmetic cubical complex. This differs from the previous construction of almost-good codes, whose base space is a hypergraph product. We express the pairing as a coefficient in a product of Moore determinants and prove polynomial nonvanishing by a bipartite multigraph specialization. We then construct covering spaces to obtain an asymptotic family of good qLTCs on which the pulled-back pairing induces the desired nontrivial transversal logical action.
Simulating quantum circuits with dynamic measurements using tensor networks
Tensor Network Simulation of Dynamic Circuits
Abstract: Dynamic circuits, which incorporate mid-circuit measurements and classically controlled operations, extend the expressive power of quantum programs and are central to applications such as quantum error correction, state preparation, and distributed quantum algorithms. However, their classical simulation is challenging due to the exponential growth of execution branches induced by mid-circuit measurements. In this work, we develop a tensor network approach for simulating dynamic circuits by extending a DMRG-based method for quantum circuit simulation to support dynamic circuit operations. To address the exponential proliferation of execution branches, we introduce and compare two strategies: a single-path stochastic approach that samples individual measurement outcomes, and a multi-path approach that maintains an ensemble of branches. We benchmark these methods on standard dynamic circuits, including the teleportation protocol and GHZ state preparation, as well as on random dynamic circuits. Our analysis explores the trade-offs between simulation accuracy and computational efficiency. These results provide a practical and scalable framework for the classical simulation of dynamic circuits.
Quantum circuit optimizer uses machine learning for better efficiency
Bridge of $Ψ$'s: Quantum Circuit Optimization with Schrödinger Bridges
Abstract: Quantum circuit optimization replaces a circuit with an equivalent one of fewer gates and lower depth, reducing execution cost and error rate. We ask whether a generative model can learn this transformation directly from examples, rather than selecting from a fixed rewrite library or rigid algebraic routines. We present Bridge of $Ψ$'s (BOPS), a generative model based on Schrödinger bridges, using a custom denoiser architecture, that learns a transformation from a source circuit into an equivalent optimized circuit. We train it on data constructed to be hard for existing optimizers, by applying rewrite rules backwards so that each input has a known lower-cost target. On held-out 8 qubits $\times$ 64 depth Clifford+$T$ circuits, BOPS reduces gate count by $2.46\times$ and depth by $2.45\times$ in geometric mean, outperforming all nine baseline optimizers. This constitutes the first generative model bridging quantum circuits and frontier machine learning methods, opening up the quantum compilation stack to learned optimization along multiple axes.
Quantum methods improve machine learning and quantum error correction
When Quantum Meets AI: Quantum Methods for Machine Learning and Machine Learning Methods for Quantum Systems
Abstract: This thesis studies the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence in two directions: quantum methods for machine learning and machine learning methods for quantum systems. For quantum machine learning, Neural Quantum Embedding learns data representations that increase the trace distance between embedded class ensembles, lowering an embedding-dependent bound on empirical risk and improving classification on noisy quantum hardware. A training objective based on the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product extends this approach to deterministic quantum computation with one qubit (DQC1) and is demonstrated on an NMR quantum processor. A margin-based generalization analysis then connects quantum neural network performance to quantum state discrimination. In the studied benchmarks, margin distributions predict generalization more reliably than parameter-count metrics. For quantum systems, a Mamba-based neural decoder for surface codes matches a reproduced Transformer baseline in memory experiments while reducing inference-cost scaling from quartic to quadratic in code distance. Under an explicit decoder-induced-noise model, it achieves lower logical error rates and a higher effective threshold. For neural quantum states, stochastic reconfiguration is interpreted as tangent-space ridge regression, with its diagonal shift controlling the bias-variance trade-off under finite Monte Carlo sampling. Multi-shift stochastic reconfiguration reduces checkpoint-local validation residuals and update variance relative to fixed-shift SR, at additional computational cost. Together, these contributions show how learned representations, statistical control, and hardware constraints shape the exchange between quantum computing and machine learning.
High-rate quantum error correcting codes improve reliability in quantum computers
High-Rate Quasi-Dyadic Quantum LDPC Codes
Abstract: In this work, we propose a novel design of high-rate Calderbank--Shor--Steane (CSS) quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes based on quasi-dyadic matrices. The Tanner graphs associated with the two component classical codes used to construct the proposed CSS codes are characterized by a girth of at least $6$. We also derive an exact count of length-$4$ cycles in the quaternary representation of the parity-check matrix. Monte Carlo simulations under code-capacity and phenomenological noise models show that the proposed codes have competitive finite-length logical error rate performance compared with state-of-the-art codes in both these settings.
Quantum error correction reduces measurements and qudits needed for recovery
Simultaneous Reduction of Observables and Measured Qudits in Entanglement-Assisted Quantum Local Recovery
Abstract: For a general entanglement-assisted or unassisted quantum error-correcting code, a set of erasures, and an associated repair group, we propose a linear algebraic procedure to compute a reduced set of observables and a reduced repair group of codeword qudits for correcting the given erasures. The procedure has cubic complexity in the repair group size and the computed set of observables has the smallest possible size for correcting the given erasures. We specialize the general procedure to quantum codes constructed from Euclidean and Hermitian orthogonality, and provide closed-form upper bounds on the size of reduced repair groups for those special cases. Based on these closed-form bounds, we propose quantum counterparts of the information locality of classical local recovery.
Quantum transformer blocks reveal how quantum models process information
Watching Quantum Models Think: Hilbert-Space Interpretability in Quantum Transformer Blocks
Abstract: Deep learning models are powerful but opaque. As quantum machine learning matures, the field faces a defining choice: build quantum models that are equally opaque, or exploit the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics to make them inherently interpretable. We show that the latter is possible. By tracking quantum mutual information~(MI), entanglement entropy, and state fidelity through the layers of a Quantum Transformer Block (\qtb{}), a fully-coherent variational circuit with quantum analogues of both attention and feedforward, we gain direct insight into how the model processes information: which tokens it attends to, when correlations form, and why predictions fail. On four tasks with known dependency structure we show that (i)~learned MI matrices align with ground-truth task structure (AUC$\,{=}\,0.69$ on lookup), (ii)~disabling entangling gates collapses accuracy from 100\% to 15\% while MI$\to 0$, proving entanglement is the mechanism, (iii)~accuracy and MI co-evolve during training ($ρ\,{=}\,0.92$ on lookup), and (iv)~per-sample MI predicts prediction correctness on the conditional task with ROC AUC$\,{=}\,0.84$. All results are validated on IBM Quantum hardware (ibm\_kingston, Heron~r2): the circuit's reasoning process, from product state through structured entanglement, is directly observable on a superconducting processor. These proof-of-concept results, obtained on small synthetic tasks, suggest that the physics of quantum computation can provide intrinsic interpretability signals with no direct classical counterpart, motivating study of whether this advantage persists at scale.
Quantum code distance proved hard to approximate with large error
Metric Self-Dual Completion and Optimal Additive Hardness for Quantum and Graph-State Distance
Abstract: We prove that the quantum code distance is NP-hard to approximate within an additive error of $c N$, for some constant $c >0$, where $N$ is the number of qubits. Our reductions are deterministic. This improves the previous square-root additive gap to $Ω(N)$ and resolves the explicitly stated linear-gap question of Kapshikar and Kundu. Our result holds for CSS codes with identical $X$- and $Z$-check spaces, and with a constant rate and constant relative distance. For every fixed $λ>1$, there is a constant $c>0$ such that hardness still holds even when every nonidentity stabilizer has weight greater than $λ$ times the quantum distance. We also improve the hardness gap of graph state distance on $N$ vertices of Grigorescu, Jha, and Samperton from cube-root to $Ω(N)$, resolving their explicitly stated open question. Both hardness results are asymptotically optimal since both distances are at most $N$. Our graph state distance hardness result holds for balanced bipartite graphs with a binary adjacency matrix that is its own inverse (mod 2). Our main technique for both hardness bounds above is classical: we show how to convert any code $C$ of length $m$ into a self-dual code $A(C)$ of length $N=Θ(m)$ while exactly doubling the original coset metric. The conversion is deterministic and efficient. We call it the metric self-dual completion of $C$. It comes with a linear embedding $τ: \mathbb F_2^m \hookrightarrow \mathbb F_2^N$. The embedding doubles all Hamming distances between vectors in $\mathbb F_2^m$ and all pairwise distances between corresponding cosets. The embedding also guarantees that all codewords of $A(C)$ of weight at most $2m$ are exactly $τ(C)$.
Efficient quantum method speeds up Hermite transform calculations
Efficient Non-Uniform Quantum Hermite Transform through Adaptive Sampling
Abstract: On the span of the first $N$ oscillator modes, Gauss--Hermite quadrature gives an exact change of basis between mode coefficients and $N$ weighted position space samples. We implement this transform with $O(N\operatorname{polylog}(N,1/\varepsilon))$ logical gates and polylogarithmic quantum width. The operator-error bound $\varepsilon$ holds on arbitrary superpositions and includes all auxiliary registers. The construction uses signed averages on adaptive windows to convert uniform-grid samples into weighted Hermite-root samples. Their varying widths control the amplification cost, giving the near-linear bound.
Tetriscnn reveals phases of matter using interpretable neural networks
TetrisCNN for interpretable detection of phases of matter from experimental quantum simulator data
Abstract: Detecting phases of matter in general relies on identifying the correct order parameter - a task that remains notoriously difficult for unknown transitions and traditionally is guided by physical intuition and educated guess. Neural networks have recently offered an alternative route by locating phase transitions in known models without any a priori physical knowledge. Yet these approaches remain black boxes and only identify phases without elucidating their properties. Moreover, they often struggle when confronted with realistic, noisy experimental data, which constitute the ultimate testbed for automated methods in physics. Here, we bridge these perspectives by introducing TetrisCNN, a convolutional architecture with parallel branches of differently shaped filters, reminiscent of Tetris blocks, that learns sparse, interpretable latent representations directly in terms of spin correlators. Applied to experimental snapshots of two-dimensional Ising and XY quantum simulators measured in multiple bases, the network not only detects phase transitions and crossovers but also expresses its latent representation and decision boundaries as symbolic formulas built from experimentally measurable spin correlators. This framework opens the way to integrating interpretable neural networks with quantum simulators to uncover and understand new phases of matter.
Galois hull dimension improves quantum error-correcting code design
Galois Hulls of Generalized Roth-Lempel Codes and Their Applications to EAQECCs
Abstract: The dimension of a Galois hull is an important parameter in the construction of entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes. In this paper, we study generalized Roth-Lempel (GRL) codes with prescribed Galois hull dimensions over finite fields of arbitrary characteristic. We develop a common construction method based on normalized Lagrange coefficients and suitable choices of column multipliers, and obtain six explicit constructions from multiplicative cosets, trace fibers, additive-subspace cosets, and mixed additive--multiplicative fibers. For extension sizes $s=2$ and $s=3$, we construct MDS and AMDS GRL codes with Galois hulls of specific dimensions. The resulting codes provide EAQECCs with explicit dimension, entanglement consumption, and relatively large minimum distance. Taking zero-dimensional hulls also gives Hermitian LCD GRL codes and the corresponding maximally entangled EAQECCs.
Variational quantum methods improve copper site chemical simulations greatly
VQE Validation on the Mononuclear T1 (Blue-Copper) Site: A Stepping Stone to the Multi-Copper Laccase Cluster
Abstract: Validating variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) pipelines on realistic chemical systems is a critical stepping stone toward tackling classically intractable molecules. In this work, we report emulator-based validation of the VQE workflow proposed for the copper active site, executed on the LRZ Eviden Qaptiva emulator. A problem-tailored ADAPT-VQE with a full singles-doubles-triples (S+D+T) pool removes over 99% of the correlation error, reaching a stable plateau at 4.03 mEh relative to exact diagonalisation (148 selected operators). This establishes a >40x improvement over the hardware-efficient ansatz (HEA). Finally, we frame these emulator results as a robust baseline for upcoming physical quantum hardware runs on Euro-Q-Exa.
Calibration improves trust in AI advice for quantum error correction
Securing quantum error correction against misleading advice from AI agents
Abstract: Can an attacker turn influence over an artificial intelligence (AI) adviser into a harmful quantum error-correction update? We identify an ambiguity in passive syndrome records that obstructs recovery selection, then show how additional calibration measurements support certified recovery updates under uncertainty and drift. In an odd-distance square toric code with error-free preparation, syndrome measurements, and recovery operations, opposite coherent $X$ rotations produce identical passive syndrome-history distributions. Yet a fixed phase correction can help at one sign and harm at the other. A terminal logical measurement on known encoded calibration states supplies the missing sign information. A separate evaluator accepts an update only when calibration uncertainty and a justified drift bound certify improvement over the current recovery, without assuming that the adviser recommends correctly. In simulated advice attacks, calibration-confidence checks reject harmful proposals while retaining beneficial updates under honest advice. We derive sufficient limits on calibration age that require improvement through deployment. In matched simulations, a validated channel-specific bound retains more beneficial updates than the general bound after accounting for evaluation time, while preventing the tested harmful activations under the stated drift assumption. A separate surface-code experiment includes stochastic circuit faults and noise changing during acquisition. Deterministic controllers achieve at least as many beneficial updates with the same observations. Violating the drift assumption permits harmful acceptance in the toric experiment. The results identify information required for recovery selection, establish conditional guarantees against harmful updates, and quantify the recovery improvements forgone through conservative acceptance.
Quantum algorithm speeds up simulating open quantum systems efficiently
Query-Optimal and Gate-Efficient Lindbladian Simulation
Abstract: We give a quantum algorithm for Lindbladian simulation given a block encoding of the Hamiltonian $H$ and a projected unitary encoding of the stacked jump operator $B=\sum_{k=1}^m \lvert k\rangle\otimes L_k$, with normalization factors $α_H$ and $α_B$, respectively. For evolution time $t$, set $τ=(α_H+α_B^2)t$. The algorithm approximates the evolution channel to diamond-norm error $\varepsilon$ using $O\!\left(τ+\frac{\log(1/\varepsilon)}{\log\!\left(e+\log(1/\varepsilon)/τ\right)}\right)$ oracle queries, matching the query lower bound for Hamiltonian simulation. The number of additional one- and two-qubit gates is linear in the query complexity up to polylogarithmic factors. The query- and gate-complexity bounds extend to Lipschitz-continuous time-dependent Lindbladians under coherent time-indexed oracle access. Our construction uses a one-query transducer that implements a product of rational approximations to short-time evolution when supplied with a catalyst. We bound the error from omitting the catalyst by exploiting orthogonality between different sequences of Kraus labels. The gate implementation combines a compressed Kraus-label representation, which stores only the positions and values of the nonzero labels, with the rotation factorization of Chen et al.
Quantum tomography exploration improves physical estimation variance
GRPO-QM: Target Preserving Exploration for Quantum Tomography
Abstract: Reward-based learning can alter the very posterior distribution that scientific inference aims to estimate. GRPO-QM sidesteps this by learning only an exploration strategy for a stated quantum-tomography posterior: a group-relative policy chooses among reversible physical moves, and an exact Metropolis correction ensures the posterior remains stationary once the policy is fixed. We then examine what learning contributes beyond physical proposal mechanisms and prior knowledge. Reconstruction comparisons suggest that most of the gains over the tested flows come from those two components rather than from learning itself, and a closed-form counterexample explains why: a reward tied to accepted motion can increase even when a physical observable remains highly correlated. Reward comparisons that control for initialization also show that aggregating across posteriors can invert the ranking that a reward implies within any single posterior. Lastly, on 45 enumerated posteriors with three training seeds each, exact and sampled gradients of the same trajectory objective reduce mean physical estimation variance by $12.63\%$ and $6.32\%$ relative to a tuned mixture, while averaging the trajectory score without rescaling its penalty yields only $0.43\%$. This indicates that objective scaling accounts for part of the disparity between sampled and exact training. The regained benefit is concentrated at four shots and flips sign at sixteen, so these exact, visible-bank diagnostics identify a concrete, reproducible failure mode in sampled training, the objective-scaling fix that addresses part of it, and the remaining gap.
NAQsim enables fast fault-tolerant quantum computing with neutral atoms
NAQsim: Full-Stack Architecture Simulation Framework for Fast and Space-Efficient Neutral Atom Quantum Computing
Abstract: Technological advances in neutral-atom platforms have opened a new path toward designing efficient protocols for fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). However, each physical operation is still orders of magnitude slower than on other platforms, such as superconducting qubits. Therefore, architects must identify fast and efficient FTQC architectures, which require reliable modeling tools to explore various design choices across the software, classical hardware, and quantum device stacks of neutral-atom platforms. In this paper, we propose NAQsim, an open-source simulation framework for neutral-atom FTQC architectures based on transversal gates. As its key feature, NAQsim enables detailed full-stack architecture evaluation that opens opportunities to explore previously overlooked performance bottlenecks. As a first use case for NAQsim, we identify one such bottleneck, patch rotations, perform full-stack co-optimization, and finally derive a near-rotation-free architecture (D3-ROT). For practical FTQC benchmark workloads, D3-ROT achieves a 2.27x speedup from this single bottleneck alone, with minimal footprint overhead. These results point to a much broader space of full-stack optimizations that NAQsim makes accessible for transversal surface-code architectures and beyond.
Algebraic codes over complex integer rings improve quantum error correction
Hermitian Duality and Syndrome Structure of CSS-Type Codes over the ring $\mathbb{Z}_q[i]$
Abstract: We study the algebraic structure of principal ideal codes and CSS-type stabilizer constructions over the ring $ R_q=\mathbb Z_q[i],$ where every prime divisor of $q$ is congruent to $1$ modulo $4$. Although such ring-based constructions have recently been considered in the context of classical and quantum error correction, the precise relationship among principal ideal cardinalities, Hermitian duality, algebraic cosets, and stabilizer syndromes requires further structural analysis. We obtain cardinality formulas for principal ideals and their annihilators. For a length-one principal ideal code $C=\langleα\rangle$, we show that its Hermitian dual is $ C^{\perp_H}=\operatorname{Ann}(σ(α)). $ For nested codes satisfying $ C_2^{\perp_H}\subseteq C_1\subseteq C_2, $ we determine the corresponding CSS-type stabilizer and prove that the kernel of the physical $X$-error syndrome map is $ \ker(\operatorname{Syn}_X)=C_2. $ Consequently, $C_2/C_1$ parametrizes logical $X$-operator classes and $R_q^n/C_2$ parametrizes physical $X$-error syndrome classes. Using this syndrome quotient, we construct a transversal of $C_2$ in $R_q^n$ whose elements have pairwise distinct physical $X$-error syndromes. The corresponding $X$-type error family is correctable by stabilizer syndrome measurement, yielding a syndrome-based recovery procedure that is consistent with the stabilizer structure. Explicit examples illustrate the resulting duality, cardinality, and syndrome structure.
Measurement correlations shape practical costs of certifying quantum models
Certification cost of quantum models: measurement correlation, not parameter count
Abstract: Reporting the Fisher geometry of a trained variational quantum model is routine; quoting the shot budget that would establish it is not. Certifying an empirical Fisher matrix to relative Frobenius error $\varepsilon$ under coordinate-wise parameter shift costs $Θ(B p^{2} V/(\varepsilon^{2} G))$ circuit executions, where $V$ is the measured readout variance and $G$ the measured squared gradient norm, with uniform allocation optimal in that class. One constant reproduces the cost of two circuit families whose exponents differ by a full power of $p$. The exponent is an identity in how $nV$ and $nG$ scale with the register, holding family by family to $0.001$ across 624 matrix-product-state cells once the finite-$p$ prefactor is removed. The cubic cost is therefore a finite-size window, set by whether the readout light cone grows with the register. A product family to 256 qubits gives $1.966$ (95% CI $1.934$--$1.997$); a brickwork entangler falls from $2.853$ below ten qubits to $1.715$ beyond sixty-four; a blocked entangler gives $1.984$ at a fixed cone width against $3.034$ at a proportional one. Fixed device connectivity fixes the cone, so a cubic budget from a small simulation overestimates a large machine, on top of hardware multipliers $2.07\times$ ($1.41$--$3.02$), $2.38\times$ and $1.91\times$ on ibm_marrakesh, ibm_fez and ibm_kingston. Cost-optimal readout weights cut the measured shot budget by $2.67\times$ ($1.33$--$4.00$) on hardware, flat from four to twelve qubits. A discrepancy model fitted on cheap circuits transfers its mean inside the calibration grid and, at six larger sizes named before the data, does not: nominal 90% intervals cover 36%, and split conformal is the only rung that stays near nominal.
Quantum oracle sketching faces depth limits on current devices
Practical Considerations for Processing Massive Classical Data via Quantum Oracle Sketching
Abstract: Classical-to-quantum I/O is a critical bottleneck for data-intensive quantum workloads. Quantum Oracle Sketching (QOS) has been proposed to address this problem. We identify its practical requirements, including the representation of data as a probability distribution over oracle addresses, the relation between sample count, approximation error, and update cost, and the coherence and runtime support required for online execution. To study QOS on current quantum computing devices, we develop an offline realization that compiles sample blocks into empirical phase oracles and evaluate it using DNA fingerprinting. The application converges with relatively few samples, while exact phase fusion combines repeated updates to the same address. However, the compiled circuits remain too deep for current quantum computing devices. Practical QOS therefore requires lower depth oracle synthesis and interactive quantum runtimes.
Scalability challenges limit fault-tolerant trapped-ion quantum computers
WISER: Systematic Design-Space Exploration of Fault-Tolerant Global Control Trapped-Ions
Abstract: Trapped-ion quantum computers are a leading candidate for scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing, but conventional Quantum Charge-Coupled Device (QCCD) architectures face severe wiring and power constraints as systems scale. The recently proposed WISE promise orders-of-magnitude reductions in wiring complexity but fundamentally alter the hardware--software interface, making it unclear whether such restrictive architectures can feasibly execute quantum error correction (QEC) and eventually support fault-tolerant workloads. We present WISER, a cross-layer architectural design-space exploration framework for globally controlled trapped-ion systems, to determine whether WISE can support early FTQC, and what hardware/compiler/QEC choices are needed. WISER combines novel WISE-specific compilation, noise modelling, and simulation and integrated them into a unified framework. WISER provides comparative lower-bound estimates of logical clock speed and logical error rate, rather than absolute hardware prediction, enabling us to identify viable operating regions while ruling out infeasible ones. To our knowledge, it is the first systematic design space exploration study targeted at WISE and scalable architectures beyond QCCD. Using WISER, we identify a narrow feasible design space requiring two-ion traps, moderate control multiplexing, aggressive recooling, and high-rate bivariate-bicycle codes. Even under $\sim 10\times$ improvements in physical errors, the lower-bound cycle time to achieve $< 10^{-8}$ logical error is $\approx 100\,ms$, which is $3\times$ slower than local control. These results expose a fundamental trade-off between wiring scalability and logical throughput, suggesting that practical early fault-tolerant operation requires complementary $> 10\times$ physical error rate reductions along with substantial $> 100\times$ reduction in fault-tolerant circuit-depth.
Improving photon routing in linear optical quantum circuits to handle hardware flaws
Handling Imperfections in Subcircuit Compilation for Linear Optical Quantum Computing
Abstract: Linear Optical Quantum Computing (LOQC) is emerging as a promising technology in large-scale quantum computing. Corresponding devices, including linear optical circuits, are rapidly growing in size and fabrication precision. However, even with improved quality, the circuits still exhibit imperfections leading to photon loss or phase noise that vary across the circuit. Already small deficiencies can have a vast impact on both accuracy and efficiency. For computations that do not require the entire linear optical circuit, so-called subcircuits, one can choose where to perform the computation, opening optimization opportunities that are addressed by subcircuit compilation. Current compilers spread the subcircuit's computation across the entire circuit, connecting the same input and output ports, thereby failing to fully exploit the optimization opportunities. However, given the subcircuit's reduced size compared to the entire circuit, one can keep its implementation localized and intentionally route photons to connect good input and output ports. This, however, is a highly non-trivial task, as numerous options must be weighed against one another, and the quality of the solution is influenced by a wide range of hardware parameters. In particular, the reflectivities of imperfect beam splitters can lead to photon losses during routing, which must be traded off against losses at the input and output ports due to imperfect transmission rates. Since current compilers do not account for these effects, we propose the first efficient subcircuit compilation method that optimizes for the coincidence rate, the probability of successfully measuring all desired photons, by handling hardware imperfections. Our evaluations demonstrate significant improvement over existing methods in robustness against phase noise and significantly increased coincidence rates across all benchmarks of up to plus 33.2%.
Decoder timing reveals hardware identity and error rates in fault-tolerant quantum computers
Hardware Fingerprinting FTQC via Quantum Decoder Timing
Abstract: As the quantum computing field transitions toward Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), intensive efforts are focused on scaling architectures and realizing active error correction. However, this shift introduces security surfaces that remain largely unexplored. Fault-tolerant quantum computers pair a quantum processor with a classical decoder that sits on the critical path of every syndrome-extraction round. For the first time, this work demonstrates that the wall-clock time each decoder takes to process a syndrome measurement and decoding round constitutes a novel, exploitable hardware side channel on physical quantum hardware. Using per-shot decoder timings from three IBM Heron processors collected over a 68-day window, the decode-time distribution alone allows a passive observer to (i) reconstruct the shot-by-shot detector-firing distribution and estimate the workload's logical error rate $p_L$, (ii) infer the code distance in use, and (iii) fingerprint the specific physical device with up to 89% accuracy (a random guess is 33%), with a pooled two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test confirming the decode-time distributions are statistically distinct. In noisy simulation inspired by public data from Google's 105-qubit Willow processor, decoder timing further distinguishes 9 surface-code patches at different locations on the chip with 81% accuracy, showing the side channel persists on below-threshold fault-tolerant hardware from a different vendor and code family.
Quantum strategies solve blocked path puzzle in interferometers
The Quantum Plumber's Problem
Abstract: Recent work quantified the notion of quantum counterfactual gain for an extended Elitzur-Vaidman bomb test style scenario, through a connection to the negativity of the Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability distribution. We here extend this work to identifying quantum advantage in a new scenario, which we term the ``Quantum Plumber's Problem''. In this scenario, we imagine a ``quantum plumber'', who knows that one path of an interferometer is blocked, and wants to find the optimal strategy for identifying with certainty which path this is. We discuss various strategies for a generalised path-encoded interferometer, as well as for the specific case of Hofmann's three-path interferometer, introduced in a recent analysis of the relationship between states in five measurement contexts of a three level system. We support our arguments on the relative merit of competing strategies with data collected over many simulated attempts at locating blockages. We also present results for a variant of the game in which the blockage is replaced by a non-demolition detector.
Quantum algorithm limits revealed for hypergraph max cut problems
The Quantum Overlap Gap Property and Algorithmic Hardness for the Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut Problem
Abstract: In this work, we analyze the average-case hardness of approximation for the Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut problem using the theoretical framework of the Quantum Overlap Gap Property (QOGP). We establish two main results. Our first result applies to a wide class of stable quantum algorithms, satisfying a Lipschitz property with respect to the quantum Wasserstein distance of order $2$. We show a weak hardness result, demonstrating that for any Lipschitz constant $L$, there is some $k$ such that $L$-stable algorithms cannot approximate the optimal solution to Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut on $k$-uniform hypergraphs in the average case. Additionally, we establish a strong hardness result where $k$ is independent of $L$, but only for a more restricted class of local quantum algorithms defined using the quantum Wasserstein distance of order $\infty$. We apply these results to establish concrete depth lower bounds for popular quantum algorithms for preparing near-optimal states for this problem.
Time frequency framework improves lattice gkp quantum code analysis
A Time-Frequency Framework for GKP Codes
Abstract: We develop a time--frequency framework for lattice GKP codes in which ideal codewords are realized in the modulation space $M^\infty$ and identified, through a vector-valued Zak transform, with a finite logical fibre over the continuous syndrome torus. Multi-window Gabor analysis then represents the logical vector by a finite block of adjoint-lattice coefficients. We prove that the normalized block map is an isometry, obtain an explicit recovering projection, and derive stable logical reconstruction. We further construct normalizable GKP approximants as lattice-envelope Gabor multipliers and establish weak-$*$ convergence and asymptotically isometric encoding. Finally, we recover displacement syndromes from phase relations between translated coefficient blocks and quantify their stability under additive perturbations.
Quantum memory efficiency depends on entanglement request patterns
The Sample Complexity of Quantum Entanglement Allocation
Abstract: How many past requests are needed to decide which qubits should share entanglement? We show that the answer depends on the allocation choices created by the queries: a larger memory can require no more data. The memory stores a classical bit and answers requests through a fixed detector that preserves coherence within each measured sector. For independent commuting $X$- and $Z$-type Pauli queries, we characterize the full attainable prediction-contrast region and construct encodings that preserve the bit at every nonzero vertex. With sharp reports, a $d$-qubit path and groups of at most $k$ qubits have minimax excess error after $m$ requests proportional to $k^{-1}\min\{1,\sqrt{d\log(k+1)/m}\}$, uniformly for $2\leq k<d$. Connected biclique regions can grow without increasing sample demand when depth, region count and connections per region stay bounded. Preparation noise introduces a separate calibration requirement. We derive an exact tradeoff with extra fresh detector calls and transfer the learning law to structured transaction co-location. Population-risk experiments test the statistical predictions. We also compare encodings on a native 15-qubit device and learned partitions on public purchase baskets. The full chain wins on the device; frequency grouping outperforms basket search in the largest-capacity retail setting.
Quantum codes with improved error correction distances found from finite field subsets
Quantum MDS codes from complements of unions of finite-field subsets
Abstract: Let $q$ be an odd prime power. We use complements of unions of subsets of $\mathbb F_{q^2}$ as locator sets and establish a sufficient condition under which a generalized Reed--Solomon (GRS) code is Hermitian self-orthogonal. Using cosets of multiplicative subgroups and sets with prescribed trace or norm values, we construct five families of Hermitian self-orthogonal GRS codes over $\mathbb F_{q^2}$. The Hermitian construction then yields five corresponding families of $q$-ary quantum maximum-distance-separable (MDS) codes. Under suitable parameter conditions, these quantum codes have minimum distances greater than $q/2+1$. By comparing codes of the same length, we give conditions under which our codes have strictly larger minimum distances than those obtainable from several previously known constructions based on trace maps, linear transformations, and cosets of multiplicative subgroups, either directly or via the propagation rule. We further show that such improvements occur for infinitely many values of $q$.
Quantum method finds better limits on approximate counting queries
Small-Bias Quantum Approximate Counting via the Multiplicative Adversary Method
Abstract: We study the two-weight decision version of quantum approximate counting: given oracle access to $x\in\{0,1\}^N$, distinguish $|x|=M$ from $|x|=M+Δ$ with success probability $1/2+ζ$. Using the multiplicative adversary method, we prove $Ω\left(\max\left\{ζ\sqrt{(N-M)(M+Δ)}/Δ,\sqrt{ζN/Δ}\right\}\right)$. The same parameter dependence follows from the polynomial-method characterization of the two-layer symmetric function by Podder, Yao, and Ye. Our contribution is a multiplicative-adversary derivation that tracks the progress produced by individual oracle queries. For the first term, after complementing the input if necessary, we assume $M+Δ\le N-M$. We use the Hamming-layer subspaces from the eigenspace method of Ambainis, Spalek, and de Wolf and compose their adjacent-layer unitary maps to relate the two nonadjacent promise layers. After fixing the queried coordinate, the analysis block-diagonalizes into four-dimensional subspaces. An exact calculation of the one-query progress ratio gives the first lower bound. The same estimate also implies $\left\|(I-\widehatΠ_{\mathrm{bad}})\lvertΨ^T\rangle\right\|^2=O\left(T^2Δ^2/((N-M)(M+Δ))\right)$ for the coherent input superposition used in the adversary argument. For the second term, we prove directly using a three-eigenvalue multiplicative adversary that unique OR on $n$ bits with success probability $1/2+ζ$ requires $Ω(\sqrt{ζn})$ queries, and then reduce unique OR to the two-weight counting problem.
Low-rank tensor method cuts quantum state estimation costs
A Block Tensor Train Burer-Monteiro Framework for Low-Rank Quantum State Tomography
Abstract: Quantum state tomography is a fundamental technique for estimating the state of a quantum system from measured data and plays a crucial role in evaluating the performance of quantum devices. However, standard estimation methods become computationally prohibitive as the system size increases due to the exponential growth of the density matrix, describing a quantum state, with the number of qubits. We propose a low-rank tensor-network framework for mixed-state quantum state tomography based on a block tensor train (Block-TT) factorization. Specifically, the density matrix is represented as the contraction of a Block-TT with its Hermitian transpose, yielding a TT analogue of the Burer-Monteiro factorization. This parameterization guarantees Hermiticity and positive semidefiniteness by construction while compressing the number of optimization variables from exponential to linear in the number of qubits. Building on this representation, we develop single-site and two-site density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithms for estimating quantum states from compressed measurements. The resulting methods operate directly on the compressed parameterization, support adaptive rank refinement, and exploit efficient tensor-network contractions for expectation-value evaluation. The framework is applicable to a broad class of low-rank quantum states, including pure states, nearly pure states, and ground states that admit accurate tensor-network approximations. Numerical experiments demonstrate accurate state reconstruction from limited measurements together with substantial reductions in memory requirements and computational cost compared with conventional low-rank tomography methods.
Fault-tolerant quantum memories do not hide logical input from error logs
Execution-transcript privacy for fault-tolerant surface-code memories
Abstract: A fault-tolerant quantum computer runs behind a telemetry stream logging syndromes, decoder actions, resets and timing separately from the answer. Can it reveal the logical input? For a distance-$d$ rotated surface-code memory on a fixed schedule of $T=Θ(d)$ rounds, under three stated hypotheses (sector-scalar honest backbone, transcript locality, Kotecky-Preiss smallness), the channel from logical qubit to transcript is $e^{-Θ(d)}$-close in diamond norm to one that ignores the input. A statement of this kind follows generically from correctability-privacy duality. Anisotropy does not. Each logical axis pays the distance of its own coset, so under amplitude damping the computational-basis label is governed by the code's $Z$-distance $d_Z\ge d_{\min}$ and not by the code distance. Two codes of quantum distance $1$ make the gap concrete. A phase-flip code's $X$-syndrome transcript is exactly input-independent under unobserved damping, while a repetition code leaks at first order. A matched converse identifies the records that do expose it, among them a lattice-surgery parity readout. On a 156-qubit superconducting processor our sufficient certificate misses by $21.5\times$, so the theorem cannot be invoked there. Measured directly, a $d_Z=1$ memory's record identifies its input with total variation $\ge 0.927$ under randomised, label-balanced acquisition. Holding the code fixed and varying the damping exposure reproduces the parameter-free law, with exponent $0.85\pm0.03$ against a predicted $0.86$. Randomized encoding returns the statistic to the floor at no two-qubit-gate cost. Fault tolerance does not grant transcript privacy. It relocates it, and only to the logical state, not to the circuit's identity.
Python framework enables fast quantum computing across CPUs GPUs and FPGAs
Python in the front, party in the Backline: compiling quantum workloads across CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs
Abstract: Moving from quantum research and development to production-grade, fault-tolerant quantum workload execution remains one of the most significant challenges facing quantum platform builders. While Python frameworks have enabled an easy entry point for quantum algorithm design, the low-latency requirements for real-time quantum error correction (QEC) demand performance that traditional interpreted environments cannot provide. FPGAs and ASICs play a central role at these layers, but their specialized programming models make development rigid and time-consuming. CPUs, GPUs, and other accelerators introduce a different challenge: as infrastructure becomes increasingly heterogeneous, programming across different devices and their associated abstractions becomes more complex. Allowing researchers to write workloads in high-level languages that map to low-latency execution across diverse distributed target platforms will enable the development of key infrastructure for utility-scale quantum systems. For this, we introduce $\textit{Backline}$, a heterogeneous compilation and runtime framework built within PennyLane and Catalyst. Backline allows us to design and build quantum-classical workloads for high-performance and low-latency devices, with compilation directly from a Python interface through MLIR. We demonstrate the compilation and execution of several quantum workloads with low-latency data movement across a mix of CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs, for both local and distributed remote hardware targets, all from a vendor-agnostic Python frontend. With an AMD VPK120 FPGA board as the controller, issuing each round from its hardware-handshake engine, we measured median steady-state round-trip latencies over RoCE v2 of $2.305~μ$s to an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO CPU and $4.5~μ$s to an AMD Instinct MI210 GPU across $10^6-1$ rounds per path, demonstrating microsecond-scale synchronous co-processing.
Quantum error codes with new algebra rules extend fault tolerance
Quantum Matrix-Product Codes: CSS-T Characterization and Maximality
Abstract: CSS-T codes are quantum error-correcting codes that play an important role in fault-tolerant quantum computation, as they help mitigate the proliferation of errors. They admit a transversal T-gate and are defined from a pair of nested classical binary linear codes satisfying a specific algebraic condition expressed in terms of their Schur square. We extend this algebraic characterization to the propagation rule known as the $(u \mid u+v)$-construction, that is, the matrix-product code constructed from two constituent codes. Moreover, for cyclic constituent codes, we provide an explicit characterization in terms of the defining cyclotomic sets, which extends existing results for cyclic codes. This framework allows the construction of new and longer CSS-T codes.
Transversal operations reduce communication in distributed quantum computing
Transversal Fanout for Fault Tolerant Distributed Quantum Computing: Analysis and Application
Abstract: We study a resource-efficient approach for implementing logical fanout operations in fault-tolerant distributed quantum computing using transversal operations on quantum error-correcting code blocks. Logical fanout, comprising multiple controlled-NOT operations from a common control qubit to target qubits located at remote nodes, is an important primitive for distributed quantum computation but can require substantial non-local communication when implemented directly between encoded blocks. We exploit the structure of encoded blocks and the availability of transversal logical operations to construct distributed fanout circuits that reduce the required non-local operations while preserving the logical action of the fanout operation. The construction is developed for encoded quantum information and illustrated using Bivariate Bicycle (BB)-code blocks. We analyze the resulting physical gate, entanglement, circuit-depth, and ancilla requirements. The approach provides a systematic method for implementing large logical fanout operations across distributed error-corrected quantum processors. Also, we study a distributed implementation of the global gate GCZ involving logical qubits (encoded using BB-code blocks), exploiting the concurrency in transversal distributed fanouts.
Improving qubit mapping for dynamic hierarchical quantum circuits
Mapping Dynamic, Hierarchical Quantum Circuits
Abstract: Qubit mapping is a critical pass in quantum compilation. Despite various advances, dynamic circuits, those exhibiting data dependent control-flow, often resulting from qubit measurements, are not yet supported by the vast majority of available qubit mappers. The crucial limitation to overcome is the dependence on flat, one-dimensional representations of circuits. Further, qubit mappers currently lack compiler abstractions that capture the hierarchical nature of circuits, hindering the qubit mapping process. In this paper, 1 we introduce a new qubit mapping method and analyses to tackle hierarchical dynamic circuits. Our novelty resides in four key aspects: modeling (statically) sub-circuits in disjoint control-flow paths, introducing a novel Qubit Reconciliation pass to maintain consistency between sub-circuit and control-flow boundaries, a loop-entry remapping pass, and a refined cost function enhanced for SWAP count, circuit depth, circuit latency and error. We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on a wide range of dynamic circuits on two monolithic Quantum Processing Units of 127 and 156 qubits, and on chiplet hexagon-based QPUs. On monolithic QPUs, our qubit mapper improves the SWAP count by up to 52%, depth by up to 18%, latency by up to 18.6%, and error by up to 40%. On chiplet architectures, we achieve improvements of up to 36% on SWAP count, 8.7% on depth, 15% on latency, and 15% of error.
QAOA performance improved by error detection for better optimization results
Toward Fault-Tolerant Variational Optimization: QAOA under [[4,2,2]] Error Detection
Abstract: We present a partially fault-tolerant implementation of QAOA based on the $[[4,2,2]]$ error-detection code, targeting the Max-Cut problem on a square graph. Our main contribution is a novel ancilla-mediated logical $R_{ZZ}$ gate enabling interactions between qubits in different $[[4,2,2]]$ blocks. We evaluate unencoded and encoded circuits under five noise models, with both all-to-all and grid-routed connectivity, using the Cirq and qsimcirq frameworks with parallel CPU execution. Post-selection on stabilizer measurements consistently improves the probability of sampling optimal bitstrings, with five measurements providing the strongest benefit. These results support error-detection as a practical near-term strategy for improving the quality of variational quantum algorithms.
Asymmetric quantum error correction improves noise handling in quantum algorithms
Asymmetric quantum error correction efficiently tackles application-specific noise effects
Abstract: Noise is a major challenge for current quantum computers. It can be broadly categorized into bit-flip and phase-flip errors. These two types do not necessarily affect the executed algorithm, thus also the application, in the same way. We illustrate this general effect for the example of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) applied to a small instance of the flight-gate assignment (FGA) problem. We compare bit-flip and phase-flip Pauli noise under both layer-level and gate-level noise models, using two circuit decompositions of the same ideal QAOA unitary: a CNOT-based decomposition and a native-$R_{ZZ}$ decomposition. In the simulations, bit-flip noise produces the larger degradation in the performance of the quantum optimization. The asymmetry is most visible in the layer-level and native-$R_{ZZ}$ simulations. We explain this by how the errors affect mixing, final measurements, and how they propagate inside the circuit. We then exploit these insights to tackle noise particularly efficiently using asymmetric error-correcting codes. As an illustration, we use the quantum parity code (QPC), a generalization of the 9-qubit Shor code, and show that a smaller asymmetric code can achieve nearly the same improvement as a larger symmetric choice. This demonstrates that error-correction resources should be assigned not only according to physical error rates, but also according to how strongly each error channel affects the application. As a result, asymmetric quantum error correction proves useful even in cases where the noise model is symmetric. Finally, we discuss how information about the noise obtained through calibration can be exploited in our approach.