- Open Access
Efficient measurement error mitigation with subsystem-balanced Pauli twirling
Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013173 – Published 17 February, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z7lh-nlg3
Abstract
Measurement error mitigation (MEM) is essential for realizing reliable quantum computation. Model-free measurement error mitigation (MF-MEM) is an important class of MEM methods that employs Pauli twirling—typically with a random twirling set—to convert measurement noise into a state-independent scaling factor, thereby enabling error mitigation through simple calibration. However, such methods face prohibitive sampling overhead, limiting their scalability. To address this, we introduce subsystem-balanced Pauli twirling (SB-PT), a twirling method designed for MF-MEM that enforces Pauli operator balance on measuring subsystems to selectively suppress dominant measurement noise. Theoretically, for a weight- Pauli observable, SB-PT removes all independent error components using only random circuits, substantially reducing the sampling overhead over conventional Pauli twirling. This efficiency gain is most significant for sparse observables. To extend such resource-efficient mitigation to arbitrary observables, we generalize and integrate a hardware-efficient measurement transformation framework that converts high-weight Pauli operators into low-weight effective ones via linear-depth circuits. The circuit noise introduced during this transformation is jointly mitigated with native measurement noise using a unified twirling protocol, ensuring robust performance. Extensive numerical simulations demonstrate a greater than 16-fold improvement in sampling efficiency over conventional random twirling, with consistent performance gains across varying system sizes and error regimes. This work provides a resource-frugal and experimentally viable path toward high-fidelity measurement in near-term quantum devices.
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