Error Mitigation and Quantum-Assisted Simulation in the Error Corrected Regime

Abstract

A standard approach to quantum computing is based on the idea of promoting a classically simulable and fault-tolerant set of operations to a universal set by the addition of "magic"quantum states. In this context, we develop a general framework to discuss the value of the available, nonideal magic resources, relative to those ideally required. We single out a quantity, the quantum-assisted robustness of magic (QROM), which measures the overhead of simulating the ideal resource with the nonideal ones through quasiprobability-based methods. This extends error mitigation techniques, originally developed for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, to the case where qubits are logically encoded. The QROM shows how the addition of noisy magic resources allows one to boost classical quasiprobability simulations of a quantum circuit and enables the construction of explicit protocols, interpolating between classical simulation and an ideal quantum computer.