Reliable high-accuracy error mitigation for utility-scale quantum circuits

Abstract

Error mitigation is essential for unlocking the full potential of quantum algorithms and accelerating the timeline toward quantum advantage. As quantum hardware progresses to push the boundaries of classical simulation, efficient and robust error mitigation methods are becoming increasingly important for producing accurate and reliable outputs. However, existing error-mitigation approaches face a fundamental tradeoff between practical performance and reliability: heuristic methods such as zero-noise extrapolation (ZNE) enjoy faster runtime but lack accuracy guarantees, while rigorous techniques such as probabilistic error cancellation (PEC) provide unbiased estimates at prohibitive computational cost. We introduce a characterization-based, rigorously-grounded quantum error mitigation and error suppression framework (QESEM) that resolves this tradeoff by leveraging the accuracy guarantees of quasi-probabilistic mitigation with dramatically reduced overhead. We explain the innovative methods underlying QESEM and demonstrate its capabilities in the largest utility-scale error mitigation experiment based on an unbiased method. This experiment simulates the kicked transverse field Ising model with far-from-Clifford parameters on an IBM Heron device. We further validate QESEM's versatility across arbitrary quantum circuits and devices through high-accuracy error-mitigated molecular VQE circuits executed on IBM Heron and IonQ trapped-ion devices. Compared with multiple variants of the widely used zero-noise extrapolation method, QESEM consistently achieves higher accuracy while avoiding the prohibitive runtime overhead associated with PEC. These results mark a significant step forward in accuracy and reliability for running quantum circuits on current devices across diverse applications. Finally, we provide projections of QESEM's performance on near-term devices toward quantum advantage.