Error Mitigation

Dorit Aharonov is a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-founder and CSO of QEDMA Quantum Computing. She co-proved the quantum fault-tolerance theorem and has made pioneering contributions in quantum algorithms, Hamiltonian complexity, and quantum cryptography. Aharonov is a recipient of the 2006 Krill prize and the 2014 Bruno award, and in 2024 she was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Noise and errors remain the main barrier to practical quantum computation. While recent demonstrations of small-scale fault-tolerant computations validate the long-term promise of error correction, the large qubit overheads and limited qubit counts in current devices delay its practical impact. Error mitigation is an approach to quantum error reduction that trades qubit overhead for additional quantum processing time, enabling larger circuits on today’s hardware. It has thus become the leading strategy toward near term quantum advantage.

This tutorial will survey major error mitigation methods, including probabilistic error cancellation, zero-noise extrapolation (ZNE) and other advanced methods. Dorit Aharonov will present experimental results on large circuits and, on the other hand, discuss theoretical limits on error mitigation at large scales. Finally she will outline how error mitigation can be combined with error correction in a hybrid manner, to optimize the use of time and qubit resources, accelerate the path to quantum advantage, and provide significant benefits even when full fledged fault tolerant quantum computers are available.