Quantum Circuit Verification - A Potential Roadmap (Invited Talk)

Abstract

Quantum technologies are progressing at an extraordinary pace and are poised to transform numerous sectors both nationally and globally. Among them, quantum computing stands out for its potential to revolutionize areas such as cryptography, optimization, and the simulation of quantum systems, offering dramatic speed-ups for specific classes of problems.
As quantum devices evolve and become increasingly pervasive, guaranteeing their correctness is of paramount importance. This necessitates the development of rigorous methods and tools to analyze and verify their behavior. However, the construction of such verification frameworks presents fundamental challenges. Quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement give rise to computational behaviors that differ profoundly from those of classical systems, leading to inherently probabilistic models and exponentially large state spaces, even for relatively small programs.
Addressing these challenges requires building on the extensive expertise of the formal methods community in classical program verification, while incorporating recent advances and collaborative efforts in quantum systems. An interesting challenge for the verification community is to design and implement novel verification frameworks that transfer the key strengths of classical verification, such as expressive specification, precise error detection, automation, and scalability, to the quantum domain. We expect that the results of this research will play a crucial role in enabling the dependable deployment of quantum technologies across a wide range of future applications.