IBM A1000-113 Practice Exam 2025: Latest Questions

A new team member claims that measuring one qubit in a two-qubit entangled Bell state will not affect the other qubit. Which statement best corrects this misunderstanding?

In Qiskit, you want to verify your circuit logic quickly without any device noise. Which approach is most appropriate?

A researcher is explaining Grover's algorithm to a non-technical stakeholder. Which description is most accurate at a foundational level?

You run the same circuit multiple times on a real quantum device and observe slightly different outcome distributions each time, even with the same number of shots. What is the most likely primary cause?

You need to run a circuit on IBM Quantum hardware that uses a CNOT between two qubits that are not directly connected on the device coupling map. What is the most appropriate action in Qiskit?

A team is deciding whether to represent a problem as an unstructured search (Grover) or as a structured optimization problem (e.g., QAOA). Which scenario most strongly indicates QAOA is the better fit?

A circuit that prepares an entangled state shows very low entanglement fidelity on hardware. You suspect decoherence during idle times is a contributor. Which change is most likely to help?

You simulate a circuit with a statevector simulator and see amplitudes (including complex phases). When you switch to running on a hardware backend, you only get counts. Why?

A developer runs a circuit on a real backend and finds the measured bitstring distribution is systematically biased (e.g., "0" is over-reported). They want a mitigation technique that targets readout errors specifically without changing the circuit unitary. What should they apply?

You are designing a workflow to compare two transpilation strategies for a NISQ algorithm on IBM hardware. The goal is a fair comparison of algorithm performance rather than sampling variability. Which practice is most appropriate?

A new team member says, “A qubit is just a classical bit that can be both 0 and 1 at the same time, so we can read both values out.” Which response best corrects this misunderstanding?

In Qiskit, you want to execute a circuit on a device and get a counts dictionary (e.g., {'00': 512, '11': 512}). What must be included in the circuit to produce such classical bitstring results?

A 2-qubit system is measured and you only ever observe outcomes '00' or '11' with roughly equal frequency. Which interpretation is MOST consistent with this observation?

You run a circuit on a real IBM Quantum device and see a small but nonzero probability of outcomes that should be impossible in an ideal circuit. Which cause is the MOST likely explanation?

A developer wants to run a circuit on a specific backend but their circuit uses gates not supported natively by that backend. What is the recommended Qiskit workflow step to make the circuit executable?

A team is using a variational algorithm and sees unstable results run-to-run on hardware. They want a practical step to reduce the impact of measurement (readout) errors without changing the algorithm’s ansatz. What should they do?

A researcher plans to use Grover’s algorithm. Which problem type is Grover’s algorithm primarily designed to address?

You need to estimate the expectation value of a Pauli observable (e.g., Z⊗Z) from a circuit’s output on hardware. What is the standard approach?

A circuit performs well on a simulator but fails on hardware. The transpiler reports that extra SWAP operations were inserted due to limited connectivity, significantly increasing depth. Which design change is MOST likely to reduce SWAP overhead on that hardware?

A team is deciding whether to use error mitigation or full error correction for near-term experiments on IBM hardware. Which statement best reflects the practical distinction?

A team is learning how measurement works in quantum computing. They prepare a single qubit in the state (|0⟩ + |1⟩)/√2 and measure it in the computational (Z) basis. What outcome distribution should they expect over many shots?

A developer runs a parameterized circuit in Qiskit and wants to obtain an expectation value of an observable (e.g., Z on a qubit) rather than raw bitstring counts. Which approach is most appropriate?

A researcher is implementing Grover’s search for a small unstructured database. They can choose how many Grover iterations to apply. What is the best practice to avoid "over-rotating" past the optimal success probability?

A team runs the same circuit on an ideal simulator and on a real quantum device. The device results show significantly reduced contrast in interference patterns (e.g., probabilities are closer to uniform than expected). Which noise mechanism is the most likely primary cause of this behavior?

A developer wants to reduce errors when running a two-qubit circuit on a real IBM Quantum device. They can choose between two transpiled versions: Circuit A has fewer CNOTs but requires a SWAP network due to limited connectivity; Circuit B uses a different initial layout and has slightly more one-qubit gates but avoids SWAPs and reduces total CNOT count. Which choice is generally preferred and why?