Quantum Algorithms Database
Quantum Error Mitigation Techniques
A family of techniques for reducing the impact of noise on NISQ-era quantum computations without requiring full quantum error correction's heavy qubit overhead.
Year
2017 onward (Temme, Bravyi, Gambetta and others)
Inventor(s)
Temme, Bravyi & Gambetta, and others
Speedup Type
No Speedup Claimed
Difficulty
★★★☆☆
The Problem
Getting more accurate results from today's noisy quantum hardware, without the enormous number of extra physical qubits full error correction would require.
How It Works
Techniques like zero-noise extrapolation run the same circuit at deliberately varied noise levels and extrapolate back to an estimated zero-noise result, rather than directly correcting errors during computation.
Real-World Impact
Already widely used in practice on real NISQ hardware today (including in VQE and QAOA experiments), serving as a practical bridge until full quantum error correction becomes feasible at scale.