Constant-Per-Layer-Depth MPS-Pretrained Ansatz for Noisy Distributed Quantum Processors

Abstract

Distributed quantum processors could scale variational algorithms beyond single devices, but circuit depth, communication overhead, and noise limit their performance. We compare ladder, mixed-canonical, and brick-wall realizations of matrix-product-state (MPS) pretraining with matched per-layer two-qubit-block resources. Despite comparable ideal variational quantum eigensolver performance and gradient scales, the shallower brick-wall architecture reduces circuit duration, idle-time decoherence, and zero-noise-extrapolation (ZNE) overhead, yielding superior noisy and ZNE-assisted performance. We then extend MPS-pretrained circuits to modular processors with one communication qubit per quantum processing unit (QPU); a nearest-neighbor QPU-path schedule keeps the per-layer depth constant as QPUs are added. Distributed circuits whose inter-QPU links realize long-range interactions of the target Hamiltonian match or outperform the single-processor brick-wall under noise when communication idle time is short compared with the coherence time. These results establish hardware-aware co-design of tensor-network pretraining, circuit scheduling, and communication topology as a principle for variational quantum computation on noisy modular hardware.