Henrik Gothen, Christopher K. Long, Djamila Hiller, Yunming Qian, Crispin H. W. Barnes, Normann Mertig, and David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur
Preprint published: 15 June 2026
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.17357
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Abstract
Useful chemistry calculations on near-term quantum processors are hindered by current algorithmic runtimes. We develop a methodology to significantly reduce these runtimes. Typically, variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) algorithms are implemented as sequences of primitive gates. Our methodology instead relies on gradient-ascent pulse engineering to construct hardware-tailored pulses for the direct implementation of VQEs. As problem sizes increase, it quickly becomes intractable to optimise a pulse that implements an entire VQE ansatz circuit. However, leading VQEs are constructed in a modular fashion. A problem-tailored VQE is assembled from parameterised circuit elements that simulate hopping between two or four electronic spin orbitals. We show that these circuit elements can be implemented more efficiently using hardware-tailored pulses. We numerically demonstrate our methodology on a silicon spin-qubit quantum processor. We find that common circuit elements, known as single- and double-qubit excitations, can be implemented in less than 289 ns and 927 ns, respectively. Compared with conventional gate-based implementations, our pulse-accelerated qubit excitations provide a scalable approach for faster and therefore more noise-robust quantum chemistry simulations by reducing VQE runtimes by up to a factor of 15.3.
Citation
Henrik Gothen, Christopher K. Long, Djamila Hiller, Yunming Qian, Crispin H. W. Barnes, Normann Mertig, and David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur. Pulse-optimised circuit elements for scalable and noise-resilient quantum chemistry, 2026, arXiv:2606.17357 [quant-ph].
BibTeX
@misc{gothen2026pulseoptimisedcircuitelementsscalable,
title={Pulse-optimised circuit elements for scalable and noise-resilient quantum chemistry},
author={Henrik Gothen and Christopher K. Long and Djamila Hiller and Yunming Qian and Crispin H. W. Barnes and Normann Mertig and David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur},
year={2026},
eprint={2606.17357},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={quant-ph},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17357},
}Software
- https://github.com/hgothen/PulseBasedCircuitElementsVQA [1]
- QuGradLab [2]
- QuGrad [3]
- PySTE [4]
- Suzuki-Trotter-Evolver [5]
Analytics
Social media posts
Bluesky
It looks like @hilbertspacepost.bsky.social beat me to summarizing our new pre-print!
— Christopher K. Long (@christopher-k-long.bsky.social) 19 June 2026 at 09:51
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Thread
VQEs have 3 main problems: (i) excessive runtimes, (ii) susceptibility to noise, and (iii) optimizability. In our recent preprint (arxiv.org/abs/2606.17357), we address the first 2 without losing optimizability. We achieve this by designing pulses for 4-qubit gates that run up to 15 times faster.
— Christopher K. Long (@christopher-k-long.bsky.social) 2 July 2026 at 09:19
[image or embed]Congratulations to Henrik Gothen and Yunming Qian for their first preprint and @djamilala.bsky.social for her first preprint on quantum information.
— Christopher K. Long (@christopher-k-long.bsky.social) 2 July 2026 at 09:19I finally got around to my own summary.
bsky.app/profile/chri…
— Christopher K. Long (@christopher-k-long.bsky.social) 2 July 2026 at 09:19
[image or embed]
The 17th June edition of the Hilbert Space Post [...] Here is this day's selection:
[…]
4️⃣ Pulse-optimised circuit elements for scalable and noise-resilient quantum chemistry 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gBi5-558 👨👩 Henrik Gothen, Christopher Long, Djamila Hiller, Yunming Qian, Prof. Crispin H. W. Barnes, Normann Mertig and David Arvidsson-Shukur 🔬 A new paper accelerates quantum chemistry VQE simulations by replacing gate-based implementations of fermionic excitation circuits with hardware-optimized control pulses, reducing runtime and improving noise robustness on spin-qubit devices.
[…]
— The Hilbert Space Post (LinkedIn) 17 June 2026
VQEs have three main problems: (i) excessive runtimes, (ii) susceptibility to noise, and (iii) optimizability. In our recent preprint (https://lnkd.in/eF3iNTyH), Henrik Gothen, I, Djamila Hiller, Yunming Qian, Prof. Crispin H. W. Barnes, Normann Mertig, and David Arvidsson-Shukur address the first two without compromising optimizability. We achieve this by designing pulses for multi-qubit VQE gates that run up to 15 times faster.
This technique is the same as we used in our recent work on magic state distillation to achieve a 42% improvement in overheads:
— Christopher K. Long (LinkedIn) 2 July 2026In our recent arXiv (https://lnkd.in/e3erv9AE) Peter Yang, I, Rubén Miguel Otxoa de Zuazola, Prakash Murali, Prof. Crispin H. W. Barnes, and David Arvidsson-Shukur benchmarked QEC and magic state factories for spin qubits. By computing magic state production overheads as a function of initialization, gate, measurement, and decoherence times we estimated the runtimes for typical algorithms. My favourite result was showing pulse optimization can cut magic state production overheads by 42%.
— Christopher K. Long (LinkedIn) 12 June 2026
X
Thread
VQEs have 3 main problems: (i) excessive runtimes, (ii) susceptibility to noise, and (iii) optimizability. In our recent preprint (https://t.co/OnDXWZfUQV), we address the first 2 without losing optimizability. We achieve this by designing 15x faster pulses for 4-qubit gates.
— Chris Long (@Chris_K_Long45) July 2, 2026This technique is the same as we used in our recent work on magic state distillation to achieve a 42% improvement in overheads:https://t.co/PKpdBj6VZR
— Chris Long (@Chris_K_Long45) July 2, 2026