Error Mitigation Thresholds in Noisy Quantum Circuits

Extracting useful information from noisy near-term quantum simulations requires error mitigation strategies. A broad class of these strategies rely on precise characterization of the noise source. We study the performance of such strategies when the noise is imperfectly characterized. We adapt an Imry-Ma argument to predict the existence of an error mitigation threshold for random spatially local circuits in spatial dimensions D ≥ 2: characterization disorder below the threshold rate allows for error mitigation up to times that scale with the number of qubits. For one-dimensional circuits, by contrast, mitigation fails at an O(1) time for any imperfection in the characterization of disorder. We discuss implications for tests of quantum computational advantage, fault-tolerant probes of measurement-induced phase transitions, and quantum algorithms in near-term devices.