Combining Error Detection and Mitigation: A Hybrid Protocol for Near-Term Quantum Simulation

Abstract: Practical implementation of quantum error correction is currently limited by near-term quantum hardware. In contrast, quantum error mitigation has demonstrated strong promise for improving the performance of noisy quantum circuits without the requirement of full fault tolerance. In this work, we develop a hybrid error suppression protocol that integrates Pauli twirling, probabilistic error cancellation, and the $[[n, n-2, 2]]$ quantum error detecting code. In addition, to reduce overhead from error mitigation components of our method, we modify Pauli twirling by lowering the number of Pauli operators in the twirling set, and apply probabilistic error cancellation at the end of the encoded circuit to remove undetectable errors. Finally, we demonstrate our protocol on a non-Clifford variational quantum eigensolver circuit that estimates the ground state energy of $\rm H_2$ using both \texttt{qiskit} AerSimulator and the IBM quantum processor \texttt{ibm_brussels}.