Harnessing Intrinsic Noise for Quantum Simulation of Open Quantum Systems

Abstract

Simulating open quantum systems on quantum computers presents a fundamental challenge: open quantum dynamics are intrinsically nonunitary, whereas quantum computers operate through unitary evolution. Conventional approaches overcome this mismatch by encoding nonunitary processes into unitary circuits, but such methods incur substantial overhead in both qubits and gates. Here, we propose an alternative perspective. Quantum processors are themselves open systems, inherently subject to noise. Instead of correcting all errors and then encoding nonunitary dynamics with unitary logical qubits and gates, we show how noise can be harnessed as a computational resource. We develop a noise-assisted quantum algorithm that selectively preserves physical noise to emulate nonunitary channels, enabling efficient simulation of open quantum dynamics with minimal qubit requirements. Our approach applies both to noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices and future fault-tolerant architectures. By leveraging intrinsic noise, this method circumvents the need to encode nonunitary dynamics into unitary gates and relaxes fidelity requirements on physical qubits, thereby reducing the overhead of quantum error correction. This framework reframes noise from a limitation into a resource, opening new directions for practical quantum simulation of open systems