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Understanding the impact of gate errors on quantum circuits is crucial to determining the potential applications of quantum computers, especially in the absence of large-scale error-corrected hardware. We put forward analytical arguments, corroborated by extensive numerical and experimental evidence, that Trotterized quantum circuits simulating the time-evolution of systems near thermal equilibrium are substantially more robust to both quantum gate errors and Trotter (discretization) errors than is widely assumed. In Quantinuum's trapped-ion computers, the weakly entangling gates that appear in Trotterized circuits can be implemented natively, and their error rate is smaller when they generate less entanglement; from benchmarking, we know that the error for a gate $\exp[-i (Z\otimes Z) \tau]$ decreases roughly linearly with $\tau$, up to a small offset at $\tau = 0$. We provide extensive evidence that this scaling, together with the robustness of near-thermal dynamics to both gate and discretization errors, facilitates substantial improvements in the achievable accuracy of Trotterized dynamics on near-term quantum computers. We make heavy use of a new theoretical tool -- a statistical ensemble of random product states that approximates a thermal state, which can be efficiently prepared with low noise on quantum computers. We outline how the random product state ensemble can be used to predict, optimize, and design Hamiltonian simulation experiments on near-thermal quantum systems., Comment: 28 pages, 24 figures

Suppressing the Trotter error in dynamical quantum simulation typically requires running deeper circuits, posing a great challenge for noisy near-term quantum devices. Studies have shown that the empirical error is usually much smaller than the one suggested by existing bounds, implying the actual circuit cost required is much less than the ones based on those bounds. Here, we improve the estimate of the Trotter error over existing bounds, by introducing a general framework of commutant decomposition that separates disjoint error components that have fundamentally different scaling with time. In particular we identify two error components that each scale as $\mathcal{O}(t^{p+1}/r^p)$ and $\mathcal{O}(t^p/r^p)$ for a $p$th-order product formula evolving to time $t$ using $r$ partitions. Under a fixed step size $t/r$, it implies one would scale linearly with time $t$ and the other would be constant of $t$. We show that this formalism not only straightforwardly reproduces previous results but also provides a better error estimate for higher-order product formulas. We demonstrate the improvement both analytically and numerically. We also apply the analysis to observable error relating to the heating in Floquet dynamics and thermalization, which is of independent interest.

The quantum Zeno effect is well-known for fixing a system to an eigenstate by frequent measurements. It is also known that applying frequent unitary pulses induces a Zeno subspace that can also pin the system to an eigenspace. Both approaches have been studied as means to maintain a system in a certain subspace. Extending the two concepts, we consider making the measurements/pulses dynamical so that the state can move with the motion of the measurement axis/pulse basis. We show that the system stays in the dynamical eigenbasis when the measurements/pulses are slowly changing. Explicit bounds for the apply rate that guarantees a success probability are provided. In addition, both methods are inherently resilient against non-Markovian noise. Finally, we discuss the similarities and differences between the two methods and their connection to adiabatic quantum computation.

We present a quantum algorithm for the dynamical simulation of time-dependent Hamiltonians. Our method involves expanding the interaction-picture Hamiltonian as a sum of generalized permutations, which leads to an integral-free Dyson series of the time-evolution operator. Under this representation, we perform a quantum simulation for the time-evolution operator by means of the linear combination of unitaries technique. We optimize the time steps of the evolution based on the Hamiltonian's dynamical characteristics, leading to a gate count that scales with an $L^1$-norm-like scaling with respect only to the norm of the interaction Hamiltonian, rather than that of the total Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that the cost of the algorithm is independent of the Hamiltonian's frequencies, implying its advantage for systems with highly oscillating components, and for time-decaying systems the cost does not scale with the total evolution time asymptotically. In addition, our algorithm retains the near optimal $\log(1/\epsilon)/\log\log(1/\epsilon)$ scaling with simulation error $\epsilon$.

Performing measurements for high-weight operators has been a practical problem in quantum computation, especially for quantum codes in the stabilizer formalism. The conventional procedure of measuring a high-weight operator requires multiple pairwise unitary operations, which can be slow and prone to errors. We provide an alternative method to passively detect the value of a high-weight operator using only two-local interactions and single-qubit continuous measurements. This approach involves joint interactions between the system and continuously-monitored ancillary qubits. The measurement outcomes from the monitor qubits reveal information about the value of the operator. This information can be retrieved by using a numerical estimator or by evaluating the time average of the signals. The interaction Hamiltonian can be effectively built using only two-local operators, based on techniques from perturbation theory. We apply this indirect detection scheme to the four-qubit Bacon-Shor code, where the two stabilizers are indirectly monitored using four ancillary qubits. Due to the fact that the four-qubit Bacon-Shor code is an error-detecting code and that the Quantum Zeno Effect can suppress errors, we also study the error suppression under the indirect measurement process. In this example, we show that various types of non-Markovian errors can be suppressed.

Many quantum measurements, such as photodetection, can be destructive. In photodetection, when the detector clicks a photon has been absorbed and destroyed. Yet the lack of a click also gives information about the presence or absence of a photon. In monitoring the emission of photons from a source, one decomposes the strong measurement into a series of weak measurements, which describe the evolution of the state during the measurement process. Motivated by this example of destructive photon detection, a simple model of destructive weak measurements using qubits was studied in [1]. It has shown that the model can achieve any positive-operator valued measurement (POVM) with commuting POVM elements including projective measurements. In this paper, we use a different approach for decomposing any POVM into a series of weak measurements. The process involves three steps: randomly choose, with certain probabilities, a set of linearly independent POVM elements; perform that POVM by a series of destructive weak measurements; output the result of the series of weak measurements with certain probabilities. The probabilities of the outcomes from this process agree with those from the original POVM, and hence this model of destructive weak measurements can perform any qubit POVM.

It has been shown that any generalized measurement can be decomposed into a sequence of weak measurements corresponding to a stochastic process. However, the weak measurements may require almost arbitrary unitaries, which are unlikely to be realized by any real measurement device. Furthermore, many measurement processes are destructive, like photon counting procedures that terminate once all photons are consumed. One cannot expect to have full control of the evolution of a state under such destructive measurements, and the possible unitaries allow only a limited set of weak measurements. In this paper, we consider a qubit model of destructive weak measurements, which is a toy version of an optical cavity, in which the state of an electromagnetic field mode inside the cavity leaks out and is measured destructively while the vacuum state |0> leaks in to the cavity. At long times, the state of the qubit inevitably evolves to be |0>, and the only available control is the choice of measurement on the external ancilla system. Surprisingly, this very limited model can still perform an arbitrary projective measurement on the qubit in any basis, where the probability of getting an outcome satisfies the usual Born rule. Combining this method with probabilistic post processing, the result can be extended to any generalized measurement with commuting POVM elements. This implies, among other results, that any two-outcome POVM on a qubit can be decomposed into a sequence of destructive weak measurements by this restricted measurement device., Comment: 6 pages