State-preparation and measurement error mitigation with non-computational states

Abstract: Error mitigation has enabled quantum computing applications with over one hundred qubits and deep circuits. The most general error mitigation methods rely on a faithful characterization of the noise channels of the hardware. However, fundamental limitations lead to unlearnable degrees of freedom of the underlying noise models when considering qubits. Here, we show how to leverage non-computational states as an additional resource to learn state-preparation errors in superconducting qubits. This allows one to fully constrain the noise models. We can thus independently and accurately mitigate state-preparation errors, gate errors and measurement errors. Our proposed method is also applicable to dynamic circuits with mid-circuit measurements. This work opens the door to improved error mitigation for measurements, both at the end of the circuit and mid-circuit.