Readout Rebalancing for Near Term Quantum Computers

Understand

Readout errors are a significant source of noise for near term intermediate scale quantum computers.

• Mismeasuring a qubit as a 1 when it should be 0 occurs much less often than mismeasuring a qubit as a 0 when it should have been 1.
• We make the simple observation that one can improve the readout fidelity of quantum computers by applying targeted X gates prior to performing a measurement.
• These X gates are placed so that the expected number of qubits in the 1 state is minimized.