Hold the onion: using fewer circuits to characterize your qubits.

A common complaint about qubit characterization protocols - especially tomographic protocols – is that they require running a ridiculously large number of circuits (experiments). In this talk, we compare the resources required by several QCVV protocols, including gate set tomography (GST) and randomized benchmarking (RB). We show how resources, primarily the number and type of circuits, depend on desired accuracy and on noise model. In particular, we show how QCVV techniques can capitalize on one's ability to simplify the relevant noise model – i.e. the types of noise being probed - and, for example, utilize an experimentalist's physical intuition to perform targeted characterization with significantly fewer circuits. We conclude by considering how existing QCVV techniques may be used in complementary ways during the holistic characterization of a quantum processor. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.