Two Variations of Quantum Phase Estimation for Reducing Circuit Error Rates: Application to the Harrow--Hassidim--Lloyd Algorithm

Abstract

We introduce two variations of the quantum phase estimation algorithm: quantum shifted phase estimation and quantum punctured phase estimation. The shifted method employs a bit-string left shift to discard the most significant bit and focus on lower-order phase components, and the punctured method removes qubits corresponding to known phase bits, thereby streamlining the circuit. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the two variations, we integrate them into a hybrid quantum-classical implementation of the Harrow--Hassidim--Lloyd algorithm for solving linear systems. The hybrid method leverages both quantum and classical processors to identify and remove unnecessary qubits and gates. As a result, our method reduces qubit and gate counts compared to previous implementations, leading to lower overall circuit error rates on current hardware. Experimental demonstrations on IBM superconducting hardware confirm the error-mitigation effectiveness of the proposed hybrid method.