English

Entropy Density Benchmarking of Near-Term Quantum Circuits

Quantum Physics 2026-01-16 v2

Abstract

Understanding the limitations imposed by noise on current and next-generation quantum devices is a crucial step towards demonstrating practical quantum advantage. In this work, we investigate the accumulation of entropy density as a benchmark to monitor the performance of quantum processing units. We provide a proof-of-principle demonstration of our novel methodology which entails developing simple heuristic models of how entropy accumulates, testing them against real QPU experiments, and finally using these models to determine a circuit volume threshold above which quantum advantage is unattainable. Monitoring entropy density not only offers a novel approach that complements existing circuit-level benchmarking techniques, but more importantly, it bridges the gap between circuit-level and application-level benchmarking protocols. In particular, our heuristic model of entropy accumulation allows us to outperform existing techniques that bound the circuit size threshold for quantum advantage.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.18007,
  title  = {Entropy Density Benchmarking of Near-Term Quantum Circuits},
  author = {Marine Demarty and James Mills and Kenza Hammam and Raul Garcia-Patron},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.18007},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:47:28.432Z