Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

Verification and validation of characterization methods for quantum computers

Presenting Author: Megan Dahlhauser, Sandia National Laboratories
Contributing Author(s): Robin Blume-Kohout, Timothy Proctor, Kevin Young

Characterizing low-level components of quantum computers is critical to understand quantum systems, identify errors, and pursue opportunities for engineering improvements. Tantamount to these characterization tasks is the expectation that an effective and useful characterization should provide accurate predictions of circuit outcomes. Success in accurately predicting circuit outcomes validates our characterization and understanding of our quantum system, whereas a failure to accurately predict circuit outcomes indicates either a poor, inappropriate, or obsolete characterization. While evaluating the performance of a characterization methodology is vital, this performance is not a binary metric and determining when a characterization is performing well or at least satisfactorily can be difficult. We present a generalized process of verification and validation of characterization protocols. We show how to determine and report characterization performance on circuit prediction tasks using statistical tests and simulation. We demonstrate this process in experiment using gate set tomography and randomized benchmarking and evaluate performance on several distinct circuit prediction tasks. We find that our validation process is an effective tool in identifying characterization shortcomings and upgrading methodologies to create more accurate characterizations of quantum devices.

(Session 5 : Thursday from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm)