Experimental Implementation of a Qubit-Efficient Variational Quantum Eigensolver with Analog Error Mitigation on a Superconducting Quantum Processor

Abstract: We experimentally demonstrate a qubit-efficient variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm using a superconducting quantum processor, employing minimal quantum resources with only a transmon qubit coupled to a high-coherence photonic qubit. By leveraging matrix product states to compress the quantum state representation, we simulate an N + 1-spin circular Ising model with a transverse field. Furthermore, we develop an analog error mitigation approach through zero-noise extrapolation by introducing a precise noise injection technique for the transmon qubit. As a validation, we apply our error-mitigated qubit-efficient VQE in determining the ground state energies of a 4-spin Ising model. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of performing quantum algorithms with minimal quantum resources while effectively mitigating the impact of noise, offering a promising pathway to bridge the gap between theoretical advances and practical implementations on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.