{
  "id": "2502.08735",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2025-02-12T19:18:50.000Z",
  "updated": "2025-02-12T19:18:50.000Z",
  "title": "CV4Quantum: Reducing the Sampling Overhead in Probabilistic Error Cancellation Using Control Variates",
  "authors": [
    "Prasanth Shyamsundar",
    "Wern Yeen Yeong"
  ],
  "comment": "38 pages, 6 figures",
  "categories": [
    "quant-ph"
  ],
  "abstract": "Quasiprobabilistic decompositions (QPDs) play a key role in maximizing the utility of near-term quantum hardware. For example, Probabilistic Error Cancellation (PEC) (an error mitigation technique) and circuit cutting (which enables large quantum computations to be performed on quantum hardware with a limited number of qubits) both involve QPDs. Computations based on QPDs typically incur large sampling overheads that grow exponentially, e.g., with the number of error-terms mitigated or the number of circuit-cuts employed, limiting their practical feasibility. In this work, we adapt the control variates variance reduction technique from the statistics literature in order to reduce the sampling overhead in QPD-based computations. We demonstrate our method, dubbed CV4Quantum, using simulation experiments that mimic a realistic PEC scenario. In more than 50% of the PEC-based estimations performed in the study, we observed a more than 50% reduction in the number of samples needed to achieve a given precision when using our technique. We discuss how future research on constructing good control variates can lead to even stronger sampling overhead reduction.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2025-02-12T19:18:50.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "probabilistic error cancellation",
      "incur large sampling overheads",
      "control variates variance reduction technique",
      "cv4quantum",
      "typically incur large sampling"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 38,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}