Fidelity estimator, randomized benchmarking and ZNE for quantum pulses

Evaluating the performance of quantum pulses is challenging without knowing the noiseless results, as quantum pulses can implement unitary matrices that are not analytically known to the user, and pulse simulators usually come with significant computational overhead. This paper proposes using reversed pulses to evaluate the performance of quantum pulses, enabling fidelity estimation by measuring the difference between the final states and the initial states. The proposed fidelity estimator can guide the design of pulse programs and indicate whether the results are meaningful for quantum pulses on real quantum machines. Additionally, the authors demonstrate the implementation of zero noise extrapolation (ZNE) on pulse programs using reversed pulses and present results for variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) tasks. The deviation from the ideal energy value is reduced by an average of 54.1% with the proposed techniques. PDF