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Entropy density benchmarking of near-term quantum circuits

Marine Demarty1,*, James Mills1,2, Kenza Hammam1, and Raúl García-Patrón1,3

  • *Contact author: marine.demarty@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. A 114, 022443 – Published 20 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/swvt-3pkh

Abstract

Understanding the limitations imposed by noise on current and next-generation quantum devices is a crucial step toward demonstrating practical quantum advantage. In this work, we investigate the accumulation of entropy density as a benchmark to monitor the performance of quantum processing units (QPUs). We provide a proof-of-principle demonstration of our methodology which entails developing simple heuristic models of how entropy accumulates, testing them against real QPU data, and finally using these models to determine a circuit volume threshold above which quantum advantage is unattainable. Monitoring entropy density not only offers an alternative approach that complements existing circuit-level benchmarking techniques, but, more importantly, it bridges the gap between circuit-level and application-level benchmarking protocols. In particular, our heuristic model of entropy accumulation allows us to outperform existing techniques that bound the circuit-size threshold for quantum advantage.

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Phys. Rev. A 114, 022443– Published 20 August, 2026
  • Received 15 January 2026
  • Accepted 5 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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