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Gleipnir - toward practical error analysis for Quantum programs

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2021-06-18
AuthorsRunzhou Tao, Yunong Shi, Jianan Yao, John Hui, Frederic T. Chong
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago, Columbia University
Citations13

Practical error analysis is essential for the design, optimization, and evaluation of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum(NISQ) computing. However, bounding errors in quantum programs is a grand challenge, because the effects of quantum errors depend on exponentially large quantum states. In this work, we present Gleipnir, a novel methodology toward practically computing verified error bounds in quantum programs. Gleipnir introduces the (ρ,Γ)-diamond norm, an error metric constrained by a quantum predicate consisting of the approximate state ρ and its distance Γ to the ideal state ρ. This predicate (ρ,Γ) can be computed adaptively using tensor networks based on the Matrix Product States. Gleipnir features a lightweight logic for reasoning about error bounds in noisy quantum programs, based on the (ρ,Γ)-diamond norm metric. Furthermore, our experimental results show that Gleipnir is able to efficiently generate tight error bounds for real-world quantum programs with 10 to 100 qubits, and can be used to evaluate the error mitigation performance of quantum compiler transformations.