Rigorous noise reduction with quantum autoencoders

Reducing noise in quantum systems is a significant challenge in advancing quantum technologies. We propose and demonstrate a noise reduction scheme utilizing a quantum autoencoder, which offers rigorous performance guarantees. The quantum autoencoder is trained to compress noisy quantum states into a latent subspace and eliminate noise through projective measurements. We identify various noise models in which the noiseless state can be perfectly reconstructed, even at high noise levels. We apply the autoencoder to cool thermal states to the ground state and reduce the cost of magic state distillation by several orders of magnitude. Our autoencoder can be implemented using only unitary transformations without the need for ancillas, making it immediately compatible with state-of-the-art quantum technologies. We experimentally validate our noise reduction methods in a photonic integrated circuit. Our results have direct applications in enhancing the robustness of quantum technologies against noise.