VERMICULAR is a hardware-optimized variant of Grover's quantum search algorithm that tackles a common challenge in quantum computing: the performance gap between simulation and real hardware. Standard implementations often achieve 15-25% success rates on current QPUs, which can limit practical applications. Through strategic placement of dynamical decoupling (DD) sequences and circuit optimization, VERMICULAR demonstrates improved success rates: 93% on IQM Garnet and 98% on Rigetti Ankaa-3. This improvement may help enable:

• More reliable quantum operations: Better consistency across different hardware platforms

• Efficient resource usage: Improved success rates can reduce the number of required runs

• Complex quantum workflows: Multi-stage operations show enhanced stability

• Practical algorithm deployment: Performance suitable for real-world testing

The approach adds modest overhead (20 gates for 2-qubit search) while providing noise resilience on NISQ devices. The results suggest that algorithm-level optimizations can complement hardware improvements in making quantum computing more practical. Complete implementation details and experimental data are provided to support reproducibility and further development of the approach.

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Grover’s algorithm provides quadratic speedup for unstructured search, but its usefulness on today’s quantum hardware is severely limited by noise and decoherence. Standard implementations often achieve <20% success rates in practice.

VERMICULAR is a hardware-optimized version that achieves:

• 93% success on IQM Garnet (20 qubits)

• 98% on Rigetti Ankaa-3 (84 qubits)

• 100% on simulators

The key innovation: strategic placement of dynamical decoupling (DD) sequences that protect quantum information during execution without disrupting logic.

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VERMICULAR demonstrates that practical quantum search is achievable on current NISQ devices through careful circuit optimization. With 93-98% success rates on real hardware and 12× improvement for multi-stage operations, it bridges the gap between theoretical quantum advantage and practical implementation. Implementation: (https://github.com/forgottenforge/vermicular)

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