Directly estimating the fidelity of measurement-based quantum computation

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 14 Mar 2026] Directly estimating the fidelity of measurement-based quantum computation David T. Stephen, Michael Foss-Feig In measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC), quantum circuits are implemented using adaptive measurements on an entangled resource state. In practice, the resource state will always be prepared with some noise, and it is crucial to understand the effect of this noise on the operation of MBQC. Typically, one measures the fidelity of the noisy resource state with the assumption that a high fidelity state means a high fidelity computation. However, the precise relationship between these two fidelities is not known. Here, we derive an expression that equates the average fidelity of the MBQC output state to a certain correlation function evaluated on the noisy resource state. Using this expression, we show that state fidelity provides a tight lower bound on average MBQC fidelity. Conversely, we also find that state fidelity can greatly underestimate average MBQC fidelity, implying that state fidelity is not a good indicator of MBQC performance in general. In response, we formulate an efficient method to directly estimate average MBQC fidelity by measuring the aforementioned correlation function. These results therefore improve our ability to characterize noisy resource states in quantum computers and benchmark MBQC performance. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.13753 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.13753v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.13753 Focus to learn more Submission history From: David T Stephen [view email] [v1] Sat, 14 Mar 2026 04:59:05 UTC (705 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)