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    "story_id": "mp-2026-10-25-015",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-brief-statedrift-problem-aware-sampling",
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    "headline": "The Initial State Rewrites the Sampling Odds",
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    "dek": "StateDRIFT chooses Hamiltonian terms for the observable at hand, cutting a tested BeH2 two-qubit-gate count from 11,201 to 983 at fixed accuracy.",
    "summary": "StateDRIFT chooses Hamiltonian terms for the observable at hand, cutting a tested BeH2 two-qubit-gate count from 11,201 to 983 at fixed accuracy.",
    "body_text": "StateDRIFT replaces coefficient-only qDRIFT sampling with a distribution optimized for the initial state and target observable. On tested lattice and molecular systems up to 18 qubits, it reduced estimator bias, variance and circuit depth while retaining a truncation bound. The BeH2 gate reduction is one reported case, not a universal ratio.",
    "why_it_matters": "StateDRIFT chooses Hamiltonian terms for the observable at hand, cutting a tested BeH2 two-qubit-gate count from 11,201 to 983 at fixed accuracy.",
    "limitations": [
      "StateDRIFT replaces coefficient-only qDRIFT sampling with a distribution optimized for the initial state and target observable.",
      "The BeH2 gate reduction is one reported case, not a universal ratio."
    ],
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    "first_published_at": "2026-10-25T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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    "tags": [
      "quantum simulation",
      "sampling",
      "circuit depth"
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    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-10-25-017",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2610.31515, original v1",
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      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.31515v1",
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    "title": "The Initial State Rewrites the Sampling Odds",
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