How Many Shots Are Enough for a Quantum Circuit?

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.16965v1
• Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:02:51 GMT
• Title: How Many Shots Are Enough for a Quantum Circuit?
• Abstract summary: Quantum algorithms require repeated circuit executions, known as shots, to estimate output distributions accurately.<n>We address the shot optimisation problem in a black-box setting, where no assumptions are made about the structure of the quantum circuit or the noise model of the backend.<n>We introduce IncrementalExecution, a novel online framework that dynamically determines when to stop executing shots.
• Score: 40.18088847775028
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Quantum algorithms require repeated circuit executions, known as shots, to estimate output distributions accurately. Determining the minimal number of shots needed to meet a target accuracy is crucial to reduce costs and resource usage, especially on today's noisy and expensive quantum hardware. In this paper, we address the shot optimisation problem in a black-box setting, where no assumptions are made about the structure of the quantum circuit or the noise model of the backend. We introduce IncrementalExecution, a novel online framework that dynamically determines when to stop executing shots based on the principle of point of diminishing returns: the point at which additional shots no longer significantly alter the empirical distribution of a fixed circuit. The framework supports customisable policies for shot management, enabling flexible trade-offs between execution cost and result fidelity within static execution scenarios. We assess our proposal through an extensive experimental evaluation spanning 33,750 framework configurations across 180 unique static quantum circuit-backend combinations, for a total of 7.3M independent experiments. Unlike prior work that relies on problem-specific knowledge or algorithm-dependent assumptions (e.g., variational or adaptive workflows), our approach is applicable to a large set of static circuits and immediately deployable on current quantum cloud platforms.

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