Reliability testing, noise and error correction of real quantum computing devices

Abstract

From Pharmacology to Cryptography and from Geology to Astronomy are some of the scientific fields in which Quantum Computing potentially will take off and fly high. Big Quantum Computing vendors invest a large amount of money in improving the hardware and they claim that soon enough a quantum program will be hundreds of thousands of times faster than a typical one we know nowadays. But still the reliability of such systems is the main obstacle. In this work, the reliability of real quantum devices is tested and techniques of noise and error correction are presented while measurement error mitigation is explored. In addition, a well-known string matching algorithm (Bernstein-Vazirani) was applied to the real quantum computing device in order to measure its accuracy and reliability. Simulated environments were also used in order to evaluate the results. The results obtained, even if these were not 100% accurate, are very promising which proves that even these days a quantum computer working side by side with a typical one is reliable and especially when error mitigation techniques are applied.