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15.7.2021
Unitary Fund Team

A new version of the Mitiq white paper

About a year ago, in September 2020, we released Mitiq 0.1.0 and posted its associated white paper. This was the first “stable” version of an open-source Python package for quantum error mitigation on near-term quantum computers. Mitiq was officially born.

At that time, only one error mitigation technique was implemented in Mitiq: zero-noise extrapolation, which was (and still is) contained in the package module mitiq.zne.

Since then, Mitiq has developed at a rate of approximately one release per month. In this period, many new features have been added and many bugs have been fixed too :-). Some highlights include:

  • A new module (mitiq.pec), implementing an error mitigation technique known as probabilistic error cancellation. The workflow to apply probabilistic error cancellation is very similar to that of zero-noise extrapolation, as shown in this quickstart example. 
  • A new module (mitiq.cdr), implementing a learning-based error mitigation method called Clifford data regression.
  • A new module (mitiq.interfaces), re-organizing all the integrations with other quantum software libraries. In particular, support for Braket circuits was recently introduced, in addition to the existing integrations (Cirq, Qiskit, PyQuil).

Diagram visualizing the modules of Mitiq. Extracted from arXiv:2009.04417v2.

These new features, together with all the additional changes that are reported in the Mitiq changelog, provided a strong motivation for re-submitting a new updated version of the Mitiq paper on the arXiv server.

However, there was another important motivation too. We are excited to give proper credit to the many people, beyond the Unitary Fund team, that provided a significant contribution to the development of the library. In alphabetical order, they are:

  • Andre A. Alves,
  • Piotr Czarnik,
  • Mohamed El Mandouh,
  • Max H. Gordon,
  • Yousef Hindy,
  • Aaron Robertson,
  • Purva Thakre.

The re-submitted version has now 13 authors and, in the spirit of open-source projects, we hope that even more people will be involved in the future.

All Mitiq contributors are now proudly acknowledged in the README page of Mitiq, where you can also find the links to their GitHub accounts.

References