Barber: Balancing Thermal Relaxation Deviations of NISQ Programs by Exploiting Bit-Inverted Circuits

One of the predominant causes of program distortion in the real quantum computing system may be attributed to the probability deviation caused by thermal relaxation. We introduce Barber (Balancing reAdout Results using Bit-invErted ciRcuits), a method designed to counteract the asymmetric thermal relaxation deviation and improve the reliability of near-term quantum programs. Barber collaborates with a bit-inverted quantum circuit, where the excited quantum state of qubits is assigned to the |0〉 and the unexcited state to the |1〉. In doing so, bit-inverted quantum circuits can experience thermal relaxation in the opposite direction compared to standard quantum circuits. Barber can effectively suppress the thermal relaxation deviation in program's readout results by selectively merging distributions from the standard and bit-inverted circuits.