2020/12/22 by Robin Blume-Kohout, Blume-Kohout, Robin, Kenneth Rudinger +7
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #FOS: Physical sciences #Low-power high-performance VLSI design #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.12231
openalex publication_date 2020/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Error models for quantum computing processors describe their deviation from ideal behavior and predict the consequences in applications. But those processors' experimental behavior -- the observed outcome statistics of quantum circuits -- are rarely consistent with error models, even in characterization experiments like randomized benchmarking (RB) or gate set tomography (GST), where the error model was specifically extracted from the data in question. We show how to resolve these inconsistencies, and quantify the rate of unmodeled errors, by augmenting error models with a parameterized wildcard error model. Adding wildcard error to an error model relaxes and weakens its predictions in a controlled way. The amount of wildcard error required to restore consistency with data quantifies how much unmodeled error was observed, in a way that facilitates direct comparison to standard gate error rates. Using both simulated and experimental data, we show how to use wildcard error to reconcile error models derived from RB and GST experiments with inconsistent data, to capture non-Markovianity, and to quantify all of a processor's observed error.