AI-Powered Noisy Quantum Emulation: Generalized Gate-Based Protocols for Hardware-Agnostic Simulation (2502.19872v1)

Abstract: Quantum computer emulators model the behavior and error rates of specific quantum processors. Without accurate noise models in these emulators, it is challenging for users to optimize and debug executable quantum programs prior to running them on the quantum device, as device-specific noise is not properly accounted for. To overcome this challenge, we introduce a general protocol to approximate device-specific emulators without requiring pulse-level control. By applying machine learning to data obtained from gate set tomography, we construct a device-specific emulator by predicting the noise model input parameters that best match the target device. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocol's emulator in estimating the unitary coupled cluster energy of the H$_2$ molecule and compare the results with those from actual quantum hardware. Remarkably, our noise model captures device noise with high accuracy, achieving a mean absolute difference of just 0.3\% in expectation value relative to the state-vector simulation.