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  • Open Access

Robustness of near-thermal dynamics on digital quantum computers

Eli Chertkov1,*, Yi-Hsiang Chen1, Michael Lubasch2, David Hayes1, and Michael Foss-Feig1

  • 1Quantinuum, 303 S. Technology Ct., Broomfield, Colorado 80021, USA
  • 2Quantinuum, Partnership House, Carlisle Place, London SW1P 1BX, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: eli.chertkov@quantinuum.com
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013255 – Published 6 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/nn2w-jxpf

Abstract

Understanding the impact of gate errors on quantum circuits is crucial to determining the potential applications of quantum computers, especially in the absence of large-scale error-corrected hardware. We put forward analytical arguments, corroborated by extensive numerical and experimental evidence, that Trotterized quantum circuits simulating the time evolution of systems near thermal equilibrium are substantially more robust to both quantum gate errors and Trotter (discretization) errors than is widely assumed. In Quantinuum’s trapped-ion computers, the weakly entangling gates that appear in Trotterized circuits can be implemented natively, and their error rate is smaller when they generate less entanglement; from benchmarking, we know that the error for a gate exp[−i(Z⊗Z)τ] decreases roughly linearly with τ, up to a small offset at τ=0. We provide extensive evidence that this scaling, together with the robustness of near-thermal dynamics to both gate and discretization errors, facilitates substantial improvements in the achievable accuracy of Trotterized dynamics on near-term quantum computers. We make heavy use of a theoretical tool—a statistical ensemble of random product states that approximates a thermal state, which can be efficiently prepared with low noise on quantum computers. We outline how the random product state ensemble can be used to predict, optimize, and design Hamiltonian simulation experiments on near-thermal quantum systems.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013255– Published 6 March, 2026
  • Received 4 November 2024
  • Accepted 21 January 2026
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