Improving the performance of algorithms on NISQ-Devices through automated control design and implementation

Current NISQ era quantum computing devices suffer from various sources of noise, such as leakage, dephasing and cross-talks which makes running useful quantum algorithms especially challenging on such devices. Our team recently demonstrated that quantum control can be used to improve the performance of individual gates, through automated-closed loop optimization of microwave pulses. These control-design techniques consistently nullify coherent errors on at least half of the CNOT gates on a quantum device, with others limited by T1. Previously, it was not clear how these improvements would impact the ultimate performance of high level quantum algorithms. We investigate how drop-in replacement of optimized control pulses can improve the performance of algorithms with potential NISQ advantage, namely, quantum fourier transform (QFT), Bernstein-Vazirani and QAOA in both simulation and experiment. We execute a fully autonomous parallel gate optimization across multiqubit systems, and with the resulting optimized gates see consistent improvements in algorithm performance. In IBM systems with no further change to compilation strategy, drop-in gate replacement delivers at least a 30% improvement to the success probability of an accurate outcome. We observe that deterministic algorithms benefit most from reduction of coherent gate errors.