When should I use ZNE?#

Advantages#

Zero noise extrapolation is one of the simplest error mitigation techniques and, in many practical situations, it can be applied with a relatively small sampling cost. The main advantage of ZNE is that the technique can be applied without a detailed knowledge of the undelying noise model. Therefore it can be a good option in situations where tomography is impractical.

Disadvantages#

In some instances the results of the extrapolation can exhibit a large bias [1]. ZNE may not be helpful in cases where a low degree polynomial curve obtained by fitting the noisy expectation values does not match the zero-noise limit. When using circuits of less trivial depth on real devices, the lowest error points may be too noisy for the extrapolation to show improvement over the unmitigated result [2].

Example#

For a simple example in which the application of ZNE reduces the estimation error when compared to the unmitigated result, see:

Zero Noise Extrapolation for mitigating errors in energy landscape of a two-qubit variational circuit