Spectral analysis for noise diagnostics and filter-based digital error mitigation

Abstract

We investigate the effects of noise on parameterised quantum circuits using spectral analysis and classical signal processing tools. For different noise models, we quantify the additional, higher frequency modes in the output signal caused by device errors. We show that filtering these noise-induced modes effectively mitigates device errors. When combined with existing methods, this yields an improved reconstruction of the noiseless variational landscape. Moreover, we describe the classical and quantum resource requirements for these techniques and test their effectiveness for application motivated circuits on quantum hardware.