PANSATZ: pulse-based ansatz for variational quantum algorithms

Quantum computers promise a great computational advantage over classical computers, which might help solve various computational challenges such as the simulation of complicated quantum systems, finding optimum in large optimization problems, and solving large-scale linear algebra problems. Current available quantum devices have only a limited amount of qubits and a high level of noise, limiting the size of problems that can be solved accurately with those devices. Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have emerged as a leading strategy to address these limitations by optimizing cost function based on measurement results of shallow depth circuits. Recently, various pulse engineering methods were suggested in order to improve VQA results, including optimizing pulse parameters instead of gate angles as part of the VQA optimization process. In this paper, we suggest a novel pulse-based ansatz, which is parameterized mainly by pulses’ duration of pre-defined pulse structures. This ansatz structure provides relatively low amounts of optimization parameters while maintaining high expressibility, allowing fast convergence. In addition, the ansatz has structured adaptivity to the entanglement level required by the problem, allowing low noise and accurate results. We tested this ansatz against quantum chemistry problems. Specifically, finding the ground-state energy associated with the electron configuration problem, using the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithm for several different molecules. We manage to achieve chemical accuracy both in simulation for several molecules and on one of IBM’s NISQ devices for the H 2 molecule in the STO-3G basis, without the need for extensive error mitigation. Our results are compared to a common gate-based ansatz and show better accuracy and significant latency reduction—up to 7× shorter ansatz schedules.