Noise-Agnostic Unbiased Quantum Error Mitigation for Logical Qubits

Abstract

Probabilistic error cancellation is a quantum error mitigation technique capable of producing unbiased computation results but requires an accurate error model. Constructing this model involves estimating a set of parameters, which, in the worst case, may scale exponentially with the number of qubits. In this paper, we introduce a method called spacetime noise inversion, revealing that unbiased quantum error mitigation can be achieved with just a single accurately measured error parameter and a sampler of Pauli errors. The error sampler can be efficiently implemented in conjunction with quantum error correction. We provide rigorous analyses of bias and cost, showing that the cost of measuring the parameter and sampling errors is low -- comparable to the cost of the computation itself. Moreover, our method is robust to the fluctuation of error parameters, a limitation of unbiased quantum error mitigation in practice. These findings highlight the potential of integrating quantum error mitigation with error correction as a promising approach to suppress computational errors in the early fault-tolerant era.