With the rapid advancement of quantum computing technology, there is a growing need for new debugging tools for quantum programs. Recent research has highlighted the potential of assertions for debugging quantum programs. In this paper, we investigate assertions in quantum ternary systems, which are more challenging than those in quantum binary systems due to the complexity of ternary logic. We propose quantum ternary circuit designs to assert classical, entanglement, and superposition states, specifically geared toward debugging quantum ternary programs.
With the rapid advancement of quantum computing technology, there is a growing need for new debugging tools for quantum programs. Recent research has highlighted the potential of assertions for debugging quantum programs. In this paper, we investigate assertions in quantum ternary systems, which are more challenging than those in quantum binary systems due to the complexity of ternary logic. We propose quantum ternary circuit designs to assert classical, entanglement, and superposition states, specifically geared toward debugging quantum ternary programs.
With the rapid growth of quantum computing technology, programmers need new tools for debugging quantum programs. Recent works show that assertions are a promising way for debugging quantum programs. However, there are two main drawbacks with the existing schemes. First, the existing schemes, including both statistical and dynamic assertions are only capable of asserting limited types of states, namely classical, superposition, and specific entanglement states. Second, the use cases of these assertions are limited, since the programmer has to know the exact/precise state to assert.In this work, we propose two systematic approaches for dynamic quantum state assertion and they can assert a much broader range of quantum states including both pure states and mixed states. We also introduce the idea of approximate quantum state assertion for the cases where the programmers only have limited knowledge of the quantum states. Approximate assertion is capable of checking membership in a set of states {|Ψ〉,|Φ〉,...}. While precise quantum state assertion can check a specific quantum state, approximate assertion enables a way to check whether the qubits of interest are in a super-set of some expected states, which is analogous to the well-known Bloom filter for membership checking in classical computing. Our experiments demonstrate that our systematic approaches can assert many more quantum states and can be used in various assertion locations for qubit state checking.
In this paper, we propose quantum circuits to enable dynamic assertions for classical values, entanglement, and superposition. This enables a dynamic debugging primitive, driven by a programmer’s understanding of the correct behavior of the quantum program. We show that besides generating assertion errors, the assertion logic may also force the qubits under test to be into the desired state. Besides debugging, our proposed assertion logic can also be used in noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) systems to filter out erroneous results, as demonstrated on a 20-qubit IBM Q quantum computer. Our proposed assertion circuits have been implemented as functions in the open-source Qiskit tool.
In this paper, we propose quantum circuits for runtime assertions, which can be used for both software debugging and error detection. Runtime assertion is challenging in quantum computing for two key reasons. First, a quantum bit (qubit) cannot be copied, which is known as the non-cloning theorem. Second, when a qubit is measured, its superposition state collapses into a classical state, losing the inherent parallel information. In this paper, we overcome these challenges with runtime computation through ancilla qubits, which are used to indirectly collect the information of the qubits of interest. We design quantum circuits to assert classical states, entanglement, and superposition states.
In this paper, we propose quantum circuits to enable dynamic assertions for classical values, entanglement, and superposition. This enables a dynamic debugging primitive, driven by a programmer’s understanding of the correct behavior of the quantum program. We show that besides generating assertion errors, the assertion logic may also force the qubits under test to be into the desired state. Besides debugging, our proposed assertion logic can also be used in noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) systems to filter out erroneous results, as demonstrated on a 20-qubit IBM Q quantum computer. Our proposed assertion circuits have been implemented as functions in the open-source Qiskit tool.
The continuous growth of quantum computing and the increasingly complex quantum programs resulting from it lead to unprecedented obstacles in ensuring program correctness. Runtime assertions are, therefore, becoming a crucial tool in the development of quantum programs. They assist developers in the debugging process and help to test and verify the program. However, while assertions can be implemented in a straightforward manner on classical computers, physical limitations of quantum computers pose considerable challenges for the evaluation of quantum assertions. Access to the quantum state of a program is limited, execution time is expensive and noise can significantly distort measurement outcomes. To address these problems, this work proposes a framework that assists developers in the evaluation of runtime assertions on real quantum computers. It translates a variety of assertions into sets of measurements, reduces execution overhead where possible and evaluates the measurement results after the execution even in the presence of noise. This approach substantially aids developers in the debugging process, enabling efficient assertion-driven debugging even in large programs. The proposed framework is available as an open-source implementation at https://github.com/munich-quantum-toolkit/debugger
In this paper, we propose quantum circuits for runtime assertions, which can be used for both software debugging and error detection. Runtime assertion is challenging in quantum computing for two key reasons. First, a quantum bit (qubit) cannot be copied, which is known as the non-cloning theorem. Second, when a qubit is measured, its superposition state collapses into a classical state, losing the inherent parallel information. In this paper, we overcome these challenges with runtime computation through ancilla qubits, which are used to indirectly collect the information of the qubits of interest. We design quantum circuits to assert classical states, entanglement, and superposition states. Our experimental results show that they are effective in debugging as well as improving the success rate for various quantum algorithms on IBM Q quantum computers.