Runtime-efficient zero-noise extrapolation from mixed physical and logical data
Abstract
Partial quantum error correction and quantum error mitigation are expected to coexist in the pre-fault-tolerant regime, yet the resource advantage of combining them remains insufficiently quantified. We study zero-noise extrapolation constructed from mixed datasets that contain a small number of error-corrected data points together with data obtained without error correction. The low-noise logical points anchor the extrapolation, while the higher-noise physical points enlarge the noise baseline at a much smaller runtime cost. Under a simple model in which error correction suppresses the effective gate error rate from p to p, we derive the variance of the zero-noise estimator and compare the physical runtime required to reach a target precision. For Richardson extrapolation, the mixed-data strategy reduces variance amplification and can lower the required physical runtime by several orders of magnitude when . As a proof of principle, we apply the method to digital quantum simulation of a six-spin transverse-field Ising model and find that mixed physical/logical datasets yield lower-variance zero-noise estimates and outperform extrapolation based only on error-corrected data in the parameter regime studied here. These results identify hybrid error correction and error mitigation as a practical route to resource-efficient quantum computation before full fault tolerance.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.15014,
title = {Runtime-efficient zero-noise extrapolation from mixed physical and logical data},
author = {D. V. Babukhin and W. V. Pogosov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.15014},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
10 pages, 4 figures