QRCC: Evaluating Large Quantum Circuits on Small Quantum Computers through Integrated Qubit Reuse and Circuit Cutting

Abstract: Quantum computing has recently emerged as a promising computing paradigm for many application domains. However, the size of quantum circuits that can be run with high fidelity is constrained by the limited quantity and quality of physical qubits. Recently proposed schemes, such as wire cutting and qubit reuse, mitigate the problem but produce sub-optimal results as they address the problem individually. In addition, gate cutting, an alternative circuit-cutting strategy that is suitable for circuits computing expectation values, has not been fully explored in the field. In this paper, we propose QRCC, an integrated approach that exploits qubit reuse and circuit-cutting (including wire cutting and gate cutting) to run large circuits on small quantum computers. Circuit-cutting techniques introduce non-negligible post-processing overhead, which increases exponentially with the number of cuts. QRCC exploits qubit reuse to find better cutting solutions to minimize the cut numbers and thus the post-processing overhead. Our evaluation results show that on average we reduce the number of cuts by 29% and additional reduction when considering gate cuts.