benchmarking protocol to show quantum supremacy, which runs a random 𝑛‐qubit quantum circuit many times with samples π‘₯α΅’; then 2βΏβŸ¨π‘ƒ(π‘₯)βŸ©βˆ’1, where 𝑃(π‘₯α΅’) is the probability of the bitstring π‘₯α΅’, is 1 for a quantum computer
Cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) is a statistical measure used to evaluate the performance in random circuit sampling experiments. It quantifies how strongly experimental samples correlate with the ideal output distribution and has been … Wikipedia
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Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org β€Ί wiki β€Ί Cross-entropy_benchmarking
Cross-entropy benchmarking - Wikipedia
January 5, 2026 - Cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) is a statistical measure used to evaluate the performance in random circuit sampling experiments. It quantifies how strongly experimental samples correlate with the ideal output distribution and has been used in demonstrations of quantum supremacy. ... {\displaystyle \{x_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}} obtained from an experimental device, the (linear...
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Google
quantumai.google β€Ί cirq β€Ί cross-entropy benchmarking theory
Cross-Entropy Benchmarking Theory | Cirq | Google Quantum AI
Cross-Entropy Benchmarking (XEB) uses the properties of random quantum programs to determine the fidelity of a wide variety of circuits. When applied to circuits with many qubits, XEB can characterize the performance of a large device.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 2206.08293
[2206.08293] Linear Cross Entropy Benchmarking with Clifford Circuits
June 16, 2022 - Linear cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) has been used extensively for systems with $50$ or more qubits but is fundamentally limited in scale due to the exponentially large computational resources required for classical simulation.
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After some further consideration I think it's quite clear that the only probability mass function evaluated in the computation of is that of the classically computed ideal distribution, denoted in the main paper.

This leads me to the conclusion that the phrasing of the following excerpt from section IV.C of the Supplemental Information (and especially the part underlined in red) is a bit unfortunate/misleading:

Just because the empirically measured bitstrings are coming from the uniform distribution doesn't mean that is suddenly for all . , as it goes into the calculation of the , is still the probability of sampling bitstring from the classically computed ideal distribution. This is in general not .

The correct reasoning is that the fact that will be (and ) when bitstrings are sampled from the uniform distribution follows from the definitions of expectation and probability mass function:

The definition of expected value is the following sum where is the probability of bitstring being sampled from the classically computed ideal quantum circuit, is the probability of being sampled from the non-ideal empirical distribution, and the sum runs over all possible bitstrings.

When bitstrings are coming from the uniform distribution will always be so can be broken out of the sum: When you sum any probability mass function (of which is one example) over all the possible outcomes you by definition get 1, and thus:

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That seems to restrict the output probability distributions of all quantum circuits to rather high entropy distributions.

The output of a typical randomly chosen quantum circuit is rather high entropy. That doesn't mean you can't construct circuits that have low entropy outputs (you can), it just means that picking random gates is a bad strategy for achieving that goal.

how can i equal when the bitstrings are sampled from the uniform distribution?

How could it equal anything else? The probabilities of the target distribution have to add up to one, and you're picking each element of the time. For example, if there was a single element with all the probability, you'd score . You always score on average when picking randomly.

How can the value of correspond to "the probability that no error has occurred while running the circuit"?

When the paper says "the probability that no error occurs", what it means is "In the systemwide depolarizing error model, which is a decent approximation to the real physical error model at least for random circuits, the linear xeb score corresponds to the probability of sampling from the correct distribution instead of the uniform distribution.".

Physically, it is obviously not the case that either a single error happens or no error happens. For example, every execution of the circuit is going to have some amount of over-rotation or under-rotation error due to imperfect control. But that's all very complicated. To keep things simple you can model the performance of the system as if your errors were from simpler models, such as each gate have a probability of introducing a Pauli error or such as you either sample from the correct distribution or the uniform distribution.

Simplified models actually do a decent job of predicting system performance, particularly on random circuits. For example, consider the way the fidelity decays as the number of qubits and number of layers are increased. The fidelity decay curve from the paper matches what you would predict if every operation had some fixed probability of introducing a Pauli error.

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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί pdf β€Ί 2206.08293 pdf
Linear Cross Entropy Benchmarking with Clifford Circuits
been developed, most notably linear cross-entropy benchmarking (linear XEB). Linear XEB was Β· originally proposed for the β€œquantum supremacy” experiment [1], where it was used to characterize Β· increasingly larger quantum circuits so as to extrapolate the error of the 20-cycle Sycamore circuit.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 2305.04954
[2305.04954] A sharp phase transition in linear cross-entropy benchmarking
May 8, 2023 - Abstract:Demonstrations of quantum computational advantage and benchmarks of quantum processors via quantum random circuit sampling are based on evaluating the linear cross-entropy benchmark (XEB).
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Quantumbenchmarkzoo
quantumbenchmarkzoo.org β€Ί content β€Ί system-level-benchmark β€Ί supremacy β€Ί cross-entropy-benchmarking
Cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) - QuantumBenchmarkZoo
The central idea behind the XEB protocol is to test whether the quantum processor can generate output bitstrings that exhibit statistically significant correlations with the ideal distribution.
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ADS
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu β€Ί abs β€Ί 2020arXiv200502421B β€Ί abstract
Spoofing Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking in Shallow Quantum Circuits - ADS
The linear cross-entropy benchmark (Linear XEB) has been used as a test for procedures simulating quantum circuits. Given a quantum circuit $C$ with $n$ inputs and outputs and purported simulator whose output is distributed according to a ...
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arXiv
ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org β€Ί html β€Ί 2206.08293
[2206.08293] Linear Cross Entropy Benchmarking with Clifford Circuits
March 11, 2024 - It has been experimentally and numerically observed that this measure exponentially decays with the number of cycles for a noisy circuit, and this decay exponent is proposed as a measure of gate quality [1, 2, 5]. Although originally conceived to support the β€œquantum supremacy” claim, linear XEB has become a benchmarking scheme in its own right [1, 2, 6, 7]. Linear XEB has the advantage of requiring only a shallow circuit, which is easy to implement on current processors.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 2405.00789
[2405.00789] Classically Spoofing System Linear Cross Entropy Score Benchmarking
February 3, 2026 - A notable first claim by Google Quantum AI revolves around a metric called the Linear Cross Entropy Benchmarking (Linear XEB), which has been used in many quantum supremacy experiments since.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 2206.08293v1
[2206.08293v1] Linear Cross Entropy Benchmarking with Clifford Circuits
June 16, 2022 - Linear cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) has been used extensively for systems with $50$ or more qubits but is fundamentally limited in scale due to the exponentially large computational resources required for classical simulation.
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American Physical Society
link.aps.org β€Ί doi β€Ί 10.1103 β€Ί PRXQuantum.5.010334
Limitations of Linear Cross-Entropy as a Measure for Quantum Advantage | PRX Quantum
February 29, 2024 - Recently, groups at Google and at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) announced that they have achieved such quantum computational advantages. The central quantity of interest behind their claims is the linear cross-entropy benchmark (XEB), which has been claimed and used to approximate the fidelity of their quantum experiments and to certify the correctness of their computation results.
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Theoryofcomputing
theoryofcomputing.org β€Ί articles β€Ί v016a011
On the Classical Hardness of Spoofing Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking: Theory of Computing: An Open Access Electronic Journal in Theoretical Computer Science
November 2, 2020 - Recently, Google announced the first demonstration of quantum computational supremacy with a programmable superconducting processor. Their demonstration is based on collecting samples from the output distribution of a noisy random quantum circuit, then applying a statistical test to those samples called Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking (Linear XEB).
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American Physical Society
link.aps.org β€Ί doi β€Ί 10.1103 β€Ί PhysRevA.108.052613
Linear cross-entropy benchmarking with Clifford circuits | Phys. Rev. A
November 20, 2023 - Linear cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB) has been used extensively for systems with 50 or more qubits but is fundamentally limited in scale due to the exponentially large computational resources required for classical simulation. In this work we propose conducting linear XEB with random Clifford ...
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Emergent Mind
emergentmind.com β€Ί topics β€Ί cross-entropy-benchmarking-xeb-fidelity
XEB Fidelity: Benchmarking Quantum Circuits
August 23, 2025 - Cross-Entropy Benchmarking (XEB) Fidelity is a statistical protocol designed to quantify the agreement between experimentally sampled output distributions from quantum circuits and the ideal distributions predicted by quantum theory.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί pdf β€Ί 2403.00938 pdf
Experimental demonstration of scalable cross-entropy benchmarking to detect
Our demonstration of the cross entropy benchmark (XEB) protocol paves the way for studies of
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 2005.02421
[2005.02421] Spoofing Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking in Shallow Quantum Circuits
May 5, 2020 - The linear cross-entropy benchmark (Linear XEB) has been used as a test for procedures simulating quantum circuits. Given a quantum circuit $C$ with $n$ inputs and outputs and purported simulator whose output is distributed according to a ...
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί html β€Ί 2502.09015v1
Generalized Cross-Entropy Benchmarking for Random Circuits with Ergodicity
February 13, 2025 - For a quadratic post-processing function, our framework recovers Google’s result on estimating the circuit fidelity via linear cross-entropy benchmarking (XEB), and we give a sufficient condition on the noise model characterizing when such estimation is valid.
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arXiv
arxiv.org β€Ί abs β€Ί 1910.12085
[1910.12085] On the Classical Hardness of Spoofing Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking
February 6, 2020 - Their demonstration is based on collecting samples from the output distribution of a noisy random quantum circuit, then applying a statistical test to those samples called Linear Cross-Entropy Benchmarking (Linear XEB).