Soumik Ghosh

I am jointly a Postdoctoral Researcher at MIT and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, hosted by Umesh Vazirani.

My research aims to use complexity theory to solve interesting problems in quantum computation and quantum physics.

Contact: soumik@mit.edu, soumikghosh@berkeley.edu

[CV] [Google Scholar] [GitHub] [LinkedIn]

Background

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago, where I was advised by Bill Fefferman and was an IBM Ph.D. Fellow.

Previously, I earned an M.Math. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, advised by John Watrous, and a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from Jadavpur University.

Outreach

I am part of Bigyan, a science outreach group that works to make science accessible in the Bengali language.

I am also involved with FRAME, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization aiming to provide research mentorship to science students in India.

Selected Publications

Author order is typically alphabetical in theoretical computer science.

Quantum Pseudoentanglement

S. Aaronson, A. Bouland, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, U. Vazirani, C. Zhang, and Z. Zhou

ITCS 2024, QIP 2023

Talk at QIP 2023.
Invited talk at the APS March Meeting 2026.
Invited to a Quantum Colloquium at the Simons Institute.

[paper] [Simons talk]
Peaked quantum advantage using error correction

A. Deshpande, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. Gullans, and D. Hangleiter

arXiv, 2025

Presented at the Simons Institute Quantum Summer Cluster Final Workshop.

Discussed on Shtetl-Optimized.

[paper] [Simons talk]
Sampling hard circuits with verifiably high fidelity

S. Martiel, J.-U. Chung, A. Seif, S. Ghosh, I. Hincks, A. Deshpande, B. Fefferman, J. M. Gambetta, and A. Javadi-Abhari

arXiv, 2026

Featured by The Wall Street Journal, UChicago News, and Live Science.

[paper]
Complexity Phase Transitions Generated by Entanglement

S. Ghosh, A. Deshpande, D. Hangleiter, A. V. Gorshkov, and B. Fefferman

Physical Review Letters, 2023

Featured by Quanta Magazine, UChicago CS News, and The Quantum Insider.

[paper]
Effect of Nonunital Noise on Random-Circuit Sampling

B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. Gullans, K. Kuroiwa, and K. Sharma

PRX Quantum, 2024, QIP 2024

Talk at QIP 2024.

[paper] [IBM Qiskit talk]
Pseudomagic Quantum States

A. Gu, L. Leone, S. Ghosh, J. Eisert, S. F. Yelin, and Y. Quek

Physical Review Letters, 2024

Editor's Choice at Physical Review Letters.

[paper]
Noise-induced shallow circuits and the absence of barren plateaus

A. A. Mele, A. Angrisani, S. Ghosh, S. Khatri, J. Eisert, D. S. França, and Y. Quek

Nature Physics, 2026

Talk at TQC 2024.

[paper]

All Papers

Newest first.

Sampling hard circuits with verifiably high fidelity

S. Martiel, J.-U. Chung, A. Seif, S. Ghosh, I. Hincks, A. Deshpande, B. Fefferman, J. M. Gambetta, and A. Javadi-Abhari

arXiv, 2026

Featured by The Wall Street Journal, UChicago News, and Live Science.

[paper]
Sample-efficient benchmarking of shallow all-to-all random quantum circuits

G. Bentsen, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. J. Gullans, and Y. Liu

arXiv, 2026

[paper]
Noise-induced shallow circuits and the absence of barren plateaus

A. A. Mele, A. Angrisani, S. Ghosh, S. Khatri, J. Eisert, D. S. França, and Y. Quek

Nature Physics, 2026

Talk at TQC 2024.

[paper]
Digital signatures with classical shadows on near-term quantum computers

P. Niroula, M. Liu, S. Omanakuttan, D. Amaro, S. Chakrabarti, S. Ghosh, Z. He, Y. Jin, et al.

arXiv, 2026

[paper]
Online learning of a panoply of quantum objects

A. Bansal, I. George, S. Ghosh, J. Sikora, and A. Zheng

Quantum Machine Intelligence, 2025

[paper]
Fast computational deep thermalization

S. Chakraborty, S. Choi, S. Ghosh, and T. Giurgică-Tiron

Physical Review Letters, 2025

Featured by Deccan Chronicle, DataQuest, Hyderabad Mail, and News9.

[paper]
Design boosters: from constant-time quantum chaos to ∞-designs and beyond

S. Ghosh, A. Mirani, Y. Quek, and M. Xu

arXiv, 2025

[paper]
Random regular graph states are complex at almost any depth

S. Ghosh, D. Hangleiter, and J. Helsen

PRX Quantum, 2025

[paper]
Classical simulation of noisy random circuits from exponential decay of correlation

S.-u. Lee, S. Ghosh, C. Oh, K. Noh, B. Fefferman, and L. Jiang

arXiv, 2025

Talk at TQC 2026.

[paper]
Peaked quantum advantage using error correction

A. Deshpande, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. Gullans, and D. Hangleiter

arXiv, 2025

Presented at the Simons Institute Quantum Summer Cluster Final Workshop.

Discussed on Shtetl-Optimized.

[paper] [Simons talk]
Higher moment theory and learnability of bosonic states

J. T. Iosue, Y.-X. Wang, I. Datta, S. Ghosh, C. Oh, B. Fefferman, and A. V. Gorshkov

arXiv, 2025

Talk at TQC 2026.

[paper]
Unconditional Pseudorandomness against Shallow Quantum Circuits

S. Ghosh, S. Subramanian, and W. Zhan

arXiv, 2025

Talk at ITCS 2026.

[paper]
The Hardness of Learning Quantum Circuits and its Cryptographic Applications

B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. Sinha, and H. Yuen

arXiv, 2025

Talks at QCTIP 2025 and ITCS 2026.

Featured by New Scientist.

[paper]
Approximate t-Designs in Generic Circuit Architectures

D. Belkin, J. Allen, S. Ghosh, C. Kang, S. Lin, J. Sud, F. T. Chong, B. Fefferman, and B. K. Clark

PRX Quantum, 2024

[paper]
On the complexity of sampling from shallow Brownian circuits

G. Bentsen, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. J. Gullans, and Y. Liu

arXiv, 2024

[paper]
IQP computations with intermediate measurements

R. Jozsa, S. Ghosh, and S. Strelchuk

arXiv, 2024

[paper]
Anti-Concentration for the Unitary Haar Measure and Applications to Random Quantum Circuits

B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, and W. Zhan

arXiv, 2024

Talks at QIP 2025 and ITCS 2026.

[paper]
Effect of Nonunital Noise on Random-Circuit Sampling

B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, M. Gullans, K. Kuroiwa, and K. Sharma

PRX Quantum, 2024, QIP 2024

Talk at QIP 2024.

[paper] [IBM Qiskit talk]
Public-Key Pseudoentanglement and the Hardness of Learning Ground State Entanglement Structure

A. Bouland, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, T. Metger, U. Vazirani, C. Zhang, and Z. Zhou

Computational Complexity Conference (CCC), 2024

Talk at QIP 2024.

[paper]
Pseudomagic Quantum States

A. Gu, L. Leone, S. Ghosh, J. Eisert, S. F. Yelin, and Y. Quek

Physical Review Letters, 2024

Editor's Choice at Physical Review Letters.

[paper]
Quantum Pseudoentanglement

S. Aaronson, A. Bouland, B. Fefferman, S. Ghosh, U. Vazirani, C. Zhang, and Z. Zhou

ITCS 2024, QIP 2023

Talk at QIP 2023.
Invited talk at the APS March Meeting 2026.
Invited to a Quantum Colloquium at the Simons Institute.

[paper] [Simons talk]
Complexity Phase Transitions Generated by Entanglement

S. Ghosh, A. Deshpande, D. Hangleiter, A. V. Gorshkov, and B. Fefferman

Physical Review Letters, 2023

Featured by Quanta Magazine, UChicago CS News, and The Quantum Insider.

[paper]
Complexity Limitations on One-turn Quantum Refereed Games

S. Ghosh and J. Watrous

Theory of Computing Systems, 2023

[paper]

Selected Talks

Peaked quantum advantage using error correction [Simons talk] [video]

Quantum Summer Cluster Final Workshop, Simons Institute (July 2026)
Invited talk, IQC Math & CS Seminar, University of Waterloo (January 2026)
CS Theory Seminar, UT Austin (December 2025)
CS Theory Seminar, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (October 2025)
Quantum Seminar, MIT (October 2025)
Quantum pseudoentanglement [Simons talk]

Invited talk, APS March Meeting 2026
Tutorial, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara (August 2025)
Many-Body Quantum Magic Workshop, IQuS, University of Washington (August 2025)
Computer Science Theory Seminar, Columbia University (September 2024)
Physics Seminar, University of Tokyo (July 2024)
Quantum Reunion Workshop, Simons Institute (March 2024)
Colloquium, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (September 2023)
Quantum Seminar, MIT (August 2023)
DAMTP Seminar, University of Cambridge (July 2023)
Quantum Colloquium, University of Maryland (March 2023)
CS Theory Seminar, UT Austin (February 2023)
Effect of non-unital noise on random-circuit sampling [IBM Qiskit talk]

Invited talk, IQC Quantum Seminar, University of Waterloo
Qiskit Seminar, IBM (September 2024)
Learning and cryptography with random circuits

CS Theory Seminar, University of Washington (August 2025)
Quantum Research Seminar, JPMorgan (July 2025)
Seminar, Google Quantum (June 2025)
Quantum Colloquium, CWI Amsterdam (March 2025)
BIRS Workshop, Chennai Mathematical Institute (December 2024)

Service

I am on the program committee for QIP 2027.

I have reviewed for both computer science and physics venues. These include STOC, FOCS, QIP, TQC, SODA, ITCS, Physical Review Letters, Nature, Nature Physics, PRX, PRX Quantum, and Quantum.