Researchers experimentally tested quantum channel discrimination on IBM Brisbane quantum hardware, comparing theoretical predictions with real-world performance. The study reveals that theoretically optimal circuits with deep architectures or high entanglement perform poorly on noisy hardware. Instead, simpler circuits that minimize entanglement while maintaining discrimination capability prove more resilient to hardware noise, provided circuit depth stays below a threshold. This finding challenges conventional wisdom: on current noisy quantum computers, theoretically suboptimal approaches often deliver superior practical results.
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