Randomized Benchmarking with Leakage Errors

Abstract: Leakage errors are unwanted transfer of population outside of a defined computational subspace and they occur in almost every platform for quantum computing. While prevalent, leakage is often overlooked when measuring and reporting the performance of quantum computers with standard randomized benchmarking methods. In fact, when leakage is substantial it can cause a large overestimation of fidelity. We provide several methods for measuring fidelity with randomized benchmarking in the presence of leakage errors that are applicable in different error regimes or under differnt control assumptions. We numerically demonstrate the methods for two-qubit randomized benchmarking, which often have the largest leakage contribution. Finally, we implement the methods on previously shared data from Quantinuum systems.