Real Randomized Benchmarking

Abstract: Randomized benchmarking provides a tool for obtaining precise quantitative estimates of the average error rate of a physical quantum channel. Here we define real randomized benchmarking, which enables a separate determination of the average error rate in the real and complex parts of the channel. This provides more fine-grained information about average error rates with approximately the same cost as the standard protocol. The protocol requires only averaging over the real Clifford group, a subgroup of the full complex Clifford group, and makes use of the fact that it forms an orthogonal 2-design. It therefore allows benchmarking of fault-tolerant gates for an encoding which does not contain the full Clifford group transversally. Furthermore, our results are especially useful when considering quantum computations on rebits (or real encodings of complex computations), in which case the real Clifford group now plays the role of the complex Clifford group when studying stabilizer circuits.