Implementation of the Kitaev-Webb and Klco-Savage algorithms on IBM Q Systems

Recent advancements in quantum algorithms have been significant, yet there is still much to be done in terms of benchmarking noisy quantum computing hardware. Utilizing IBM's Qiskit software development kit and quantum hardware, we have streamlined a novel way of benchmarking and characterizing error on noisy qubits. Specifically, we test the noise levels of IBM's quantum hardware by implementing the Kitaev-Webb state preparation algorithm (Kitaev, Webb 2008). We further examine Kitaev-Webb and Klco-Savage (Klco, Savage 2019) algorithms to prepare a 1D discrete Gaussian and a symmetric exponential distribution as a pseudo-Gaussian respectively. Such simulations provide insight into dominant sources of noise on quantum chips. However, the challenge in manipulating and maintaining states at quantum scales results in poor performance on these problems, even for shallow circuits.