Lifting Multiplicity in Randomized Benchmarking

Abstract

Randomized benchmarking comprises a suite of standard techniques for assessing the operational fidelity of quantum processors. These techniques can be reliably applied to groups with process matrix representations that are free of multiplicity. However, many groups that are naturally formed from native gates do have multiplicity, and it is difficult to draw robust conclusions from the resulting data. In this work, we present a new and intrinsic solution to the problem of multiplicity that completely eliminates the need to fit multi-exponential decays while still remaining robust to errors in state preparation and measurement. Our procedure, which we call lifted randomized benchmarking, generalizes key elements of both character and synthetic randomized benchmarking to benchmark a target group of quantum gates with respect to an enlarged group. We illustrate in numerical examples that our method can efficiently and reliably estimate the fidelity of two-qubit gates relevant to experimental trapped-ion systems. These techniques may find applications beyond randomized benchmarking to quantum tomography and learning, as well as the characterization of error-correcting codes.