What the study found
A hardware-efficient implementation of the Mølmer–Sørensen gate was tested on superconducting quantum hardware and showed performance close to the device’s native controlled-NOT (CX) gate. The gate also produced the target Bell state from the |00⟩ input with a reported success probability of 94.2%.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors conclude that non-native entangling gates can be optimized to perform on par with hardware-native operations. They say this expands the effective gate set for algorithm design on fixed-architecture processors and provides a benchmark for comparing gates across platforms.
What the researchers tested
The researchers implemented a Mølmer–Sørensen gate, an entangling operation originally used in trapped-ion systems, on IBM Quantum’s superconducting processors. They characterized its performance using quantum process tomography (QPT), a technique for estimating how closely a real quantum process matches the intended one.
What worked and what didn't
The implementation achieved a process fidelity of 92.47% on real hardware. The abstract says this is competitive with the device’s native CX gate fidelity of 93.02%, and that the gate correctly prepared the target Bell state from |00⟩ with 94.2% success probability.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe detailed limitations, error sources, or the number of devices and trials used. The results are reported for IBM Quantum superconducting processors and, as stated, support this specific hardware-efficient implementation.
Key points
- A hardware-efficient Mølmer–Sørensen gate was implemented on superconducting quantum processors.
- The measured process fidelity was 92.47% on real hardware.
- The device’s native CX gate had a reported fidelity of 93.02%, which the authors describe as competitive with the new gate.
- From the |00⟩ input, the gate prepared the target Bell state with 94.2% success probability.
- The authors say the result expands the effective gate set for fixed-architecture quantum processors.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- Hardware-efficient Mølmer–Sørensen gate performs comparably on superconducting hardware
- Authors:
- M. AbuGhanem
- Institutions:
- Ain Shams University
- Publication date:
- 2026-04-21
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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