Experimental accreditation of outputs of noisy quantum computers

We provide and experimentally demonstrate an accreditation protocol that upper bounds the variation distance between noisy and noiseless probability distributions of the outputs of arbitrary quantum computations. We accredit the outputs of 24 quantum circuits executed on programmable superconducting hardware, ranging from depth-9 circuits on 10 qubits to depth-21 circuits on 4 qubits. Our protocol requires implementing the “target” quantum circuit along with a number of random Clifford circuits and subsequently postprocessing the outputs of these Clifford circuits. Importantly, the number of Clifford circuits is chosen to obtain the bound with the desired confidence and accuracy and is independent of the size and nature of the target circuit. We thus demonstrate a practical and scalable method of ascertaining the correctness of the outputs of arbitrary-sized noisy quantum computers—the ultimate arbiter of the utility of the computer itself