Simulating Quantum Circuits with Arbitrary Local Noise Using Pauli Propagation

2025/01/22 by Armando Angrisani, Angrisani, Armando, Antonio A. Mele +8 · 2 voices · 26 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Computer science #Electronic circuit #Noise (video) #Pauli exclusion principle #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Quantum noise #Quantum system #stochastic dynamics and bifurcation

paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1103/fb28-wlv2

published in PRX Quantum 7(2) (American Physical Society)

openalex publication_date 2026/03/17 · openalex created_date 2026/03/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/24

Abstract

We present a polynomial-time classical algorithm for estimating expectation values of arbitrary observables on typical quantum circuits under any incoherent local noise, including non-unital or dephasing. Although previous research demonstrated that some carefully designed quantum circuits affected by non-unital noise cannot be efficiently simulated, we show that this does not apply to average-case circuits, as these can be efficiently simulated using Pauli-path methods. Specifically, we prove that, with high probability over the circuit gates’ choice, Pauli propagation algorithms with tailored truncation strategies achieve an inversely polynomially small simulation error. This result holds for arbitrary circuit topologies and for any local noise, under the assumption that the distribution of each circuit layer is invariant under single-qubit random gates. Under the same minimal assumptions, we also prove that most noisy circuits can be truncated to an effective logarithmic depth for the task of estimating expectation values of observables, thus generalizing prior results to a significantly broader class of circuit ensembles. We further numerically validate our algorithm with simulations on a <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:mn>6</a:mn> <a:mo>×</a:mo> <a:mn>6</a:mn> </a:math> lattice of qubits under the effects of amplitude damping and dephasing noise, as well as real-time dynamics on an <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <c:mn>11</c:mn> <c:mo>×</c:mo> <c:mn>11</c:mn> </c:math> lattice of qubits affected by amplitude damping.

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Discussions

• Another amazing paper from our Summer School student @antonioannamele.bsky.social (is that 3 papers already?!) and from our collaboration with the power house that are @aangrisani.bsky.social and @qua [bsky, 28 points, 1 comments]
• Just released two papers on classical simulation of quantum circuits with arbitrary local noise! arxiv.org/abs/2501.13101 arxiv.org/abs/2501.13050 🧵👇 [bsky, 22 points, 2 comments]

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