{
  "abstract": "Pauli correlation encoding (PCE) encodes $m$ binary variables in the signs of $k$-body Pauli correlators of $n=O(m^{1/k})$ qubits, and trains a parameterized circuit on a relaxed loss of sharpness $α$. The strongest published schedules sharpen this loss aggressively and are benchmarked with exact expectation values, whereas a quantum computer estimates correlators from a finite number of shots. We show that the sharpness is a hidden shot budget. Since the expected sign of a correlator estimated from $S$ shots, $\\mathrm{erf}(c\\sqrt{S/2})$, agrees with $\\tanh(0.851\\sqrt{S}\\,c)$ to within $0.019$, the edge term of the relaxed loss at $α=0.851\\sqrt{S}$ approximately equals, up to a constant, minus twice the cut expected from decoding $S$ shots. This explains why schedules tuned with exact expectation values lose their advantage at realistic budgets, and yields a shot-aware schedule whose final sharpness is set by the shot budget. On five G-set graphs with $800$ variables on $13$ qubits, this schedule outperforms every published schedule at its target budget in all $150$ paired comparisons of the decoded circuit output, owing to the sharpness at $1.6\\times10^4$ shots and mostly to switching off the regularization at $10^3$; after a classical bit-swap search, it remains the best on average at $1.6\\times10^4$ shots. Device noise damps the correlators by a factor $s$, which amounts to a smaller shot budget $s^2S$. On the IBM Heron processor ibm_fez, an all-to-all ansatz of the type used for the best published G-set results compiles to $835$ CZ gates and decodes to a random cut, while our $96$-CZ hardware-native circuit, trained in simulation and sharpened to $α\\simeq0.65\\,s\\sqrt{S}$, retains up to $0.919$ of the best-known cut. For new circuits, a damping and an offset calibrated on other circuits of the same graph predicted the decoded cuts at $10^3$ shots to within $0.002$.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.19544",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Achraf Boussahi"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ayz55g8vw4a6n.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.19544",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "ayz55g8vw4a6n",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19544",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7222167239",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.19544",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-14",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ayz55g8vw4a6n.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:29:31Z",
      "native_id": "2610.19544",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19544"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Shot- and Noise-Aware Pauli Correlation Encoding for Max-Cut Experiments on IBM Heron Quantum Processor",
  "title_text": "Shot- and Noise-Aware Pauli Correlation Encoding for Max-Cut Experiments on IBM Heron Quantum Processor",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:29:31Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/ayz55g8vw4a6n",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}