Quantum simulation via stochastic combination of unitaries

Abstract Quantum simulation algorithms often require numerous ancilla qubits and deep circuits, prohibitive for near-term hardware. We introduce a framework for simulating quantum channels using ensembles of low-depth circuits in place of many-qubit dilations. This naturally enables simulations of open systems, which we demonstrate by preparing damped many-qubit GHZ states on ibm_hanoi. The technique further inspires two Hamiltonian simulation algorithms with gate counts that are asymptotically independent of the spectral precision target, reducing resource requirements by several orders of magnitude for a benchmark system.