Quantum computing has existed in the theoretical realm for several decades. Recently, quantum computing has re-emerged as a promising technology to solve problems that a classical computer could take hundreds of years to solve. However, there are challenges and opportunities for academics and practitioners regarding software engineering practices for testing and debugging quantum programs. This article presents a roadmap for addressing these challenges, pointing out the existing gaps in the literature and suggesting research directions. We discuss the limitations caused by noise, the no-cloning theorem, the lack of a standard architecture for quantum computers, among others. Regarding testing, we highlight gaps and opportunities related to transpilation, mutation analysis, input states with hybrid interfaces, program analysis, and coverage. For debugging, we present the current strategies, including classical techniques applied to quantum programs, quantum-specific assertions, and quantum-related bug patterns. We introduce a conceptual model to illustrate concepts regarding the testing and debugging of quantum programs and the relationship between them. Those concepts are used to identify and discuss research challenges to cope with quantum programs through 2030, focusing on the interfaces between classical and quantum computing and on creating testing and debugging techniques that take advantage of the unique quantum computing characteristics.
Quantum computing has existed in the theoretical realm for several decades. Recently, quantum computing has re-emerged as a promising technology to solve problems that a classical computer could take hundreds of years to solve. However, there are challenges and opportunities for academics and practitioners regarding software engineering practices for testing and debugging quantum programs. This article presents a roadmap for addressing these challenges, pointing out the existing gaps in the literature and suggesting research directions. We discuss the limitations caused by noise, the no-cloning theorem, the lack of a standard architecture for quantum computers, among others. Regarding testing, we highlight gaps and opportunities related to transpilation, mutation analysis, input states with hybrid interfaces, program analysis, and coverage. For debugging, we present the current strategies, including classical techniques applied to quantum programs, quantum-specific assertions, and quantum-related bug patterns. We introduce a conceptual model to illustrate concepts regarding the testing and debugging of quantum programs and the relationship between them. Those concepts are used to identify and discuss research challenges to cope with quantum programs through 2030, focusing on the interfaces between classical and quantum computing and on creating testing and debugging techniques that take advantage of the unique quantum computing characteristics.
With recent breakthroughs in quantum computing, it has become a coming reality instead of a promising future. Quantum computing applications offer revolutionary potential across multiple domains including artificial intelligence (AI), optimization, healthcare, energy, and space, known as quantum advantage. The power of quantum computing relies on novel quantum algorithms, quantum software, and hardware. Unlike classical software, quantum software has unique features because of quantum mechanics such as superposition and noncloning. This opens a new research field - quantum software engineering (QSE). While the software engineering (SE) research community became aware of this need in 2019, we noticed the lack of a comprehensive investigation of state-of-the-art technologies and tools to improve quantum software quality. Testing and debugging are the two most efficient approaches to assure software quality in classical SE. In QSE, testing and debugging quantum programs become challenging due to quantum mechanics. While we can leverage some best practices from the classical world, new techniques and tools are needed to address the concerns in QSE. In this chapter, we first conduct a survey study of the state-of-the-art technologies and tools for testing and debugging quantum software. This study includes but is not limited to quantum bug pattern analysis and detection, quantum software testing techniques and classification, and quantum debugging techniques. In the second place, we provide our visions and insights of testing and debugging quantum software in terms of challenges and opportunities for improving quantum software quality. This survey has the potential to foster a research community committed to developing novel methods and tools for QSE.
Quantum computers are becoming more mainstream. As more programmers are starting to look at writing quantum programs, they need to test and debug their code. In this paper, we discuss various use-cases for quantum computers, either standalone or as part of a System of Systems. Based on these use-cases, we discuss some testing and debugging tactics that one can leverage to ensure the quality of the quantum software. We also highlight quantum-computer-specific issues and list novel techniques that are needed to address these issues. The practitioners can readily apply some of these tactics to their process of writing quantum programs, while researchers can learn about opportunities for future work.
Abstract Quantum computing offers the potential for exponential speed-ups for classically intractable problems, yet quantum programming is still susceptible to bugs. Classical debugging methods are often inadequate, as quantum mechanical principles make state inspection disruptive and classical simulation has exponential time complexity. This survey explores the landscape of quantum assertions as a key technique for identifying and locating bugs in quantum programs. We classify these techniques into two primary categories based on their evaluation stage: classical runtime and quantum runtime assertions. For each category, we analyze the strengths, limitations, time complexity, and applicability of current methods. Our findings show that scalable quantum debugging remains an open problem—a challenge that will persist even with the advent of fault-tolerant hardware. Finally, this work highlights key challenges and proposes future directions for the development of novel quantum debugging techniques.
A Suite for Testing and Debugging Quantum Programs", addresses an underdeveloped area of research in the current scope of quantum computing: testing and debugging quantum programs.This work makes a significant contribution not only to the future of quantum software development but also more broadly to the advancement of the field of quantum computing, as software tools are critical to maturing from the current NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era to the FTQC (fault-tolerant quantum computation) era.Quantum technology has been rapidly evolving, as seen through the significant advances in quantum computing, sensing, cryptography, and communication.Quantum technology is transitioning from experimental prototypes to more practical, yet still limited, applications.These advances offer the prospect of unprecedented computational capabilities for specific tasks like optimization, chemical simulation, and cryptography but are hindered by challenges such as error rates, qubit coherence times, and scalability.All of these problems are being addressed by physicists and engineers.One area receiving far too little attention is the emerging field of quantum software engineering.
Abstract As quantum computers continue to improve in quality and scale, there is a growing need for accessible software frameworks for programming them. However, the unique behavior of quantum systems means specialized approaches, beyond traditional software development, are required. This is particularly true for debugging due to quantum bugs, i.e., bugs that occur precisely because an algorithm is a quantum algorithm. Pinpointing a quantum bug’s root cause often requires significant developer time, as there is little established guidance for quantum debugging techniques. Developing such guidance is the main challenge we sought to address. In this work, we describe a set of 14 quantum bugs, sourced primarily from our experience as quantum software developers, and supplemented by analysis of open-source GitHub repositories. We detail their context, symptoms, and the techniques applied to identify and fix them. While classifying these bugs based on existing schemes, we observed that most emerged due to unique interactions between multiple aspects of an algorithm or workflow. In other words, they occurred because more than one thing went wrong, which provided important insight into why quantum debugging is more challenging. Furthermore, based on this clustering, we found that—unexpectedly—there is no clear relationship between debugging strategies and bug classes. Further research is needed to develop effective and systematic quantum debugging strategies.
Quantum computing is getting increasing interest from both academia and industry, and the quantum software landscape has been growing rapidly. The quantum software stack comprises quantum programs, implementing algorithms, and platforms like IBM Qiskit, Google Cirq, and Microsoft Q#, enabling their development. To ensure the reliability and performance of quantum software, various techniques for testing and analyzing it have been proposed, such as test generation, bug pattern detection, and circuit optimization. However, the large amount of work and the fact that work on quantum software is performed by several research communities, make it difficult to get a comprehensive overview of the existing techniques. In this work, we provide an extensive survey of the state of the art in testing and analysis of quantum software. We discuss literature from several research communities, including quantum computing, software engineering, programming languages, and formal methods. Our survey covers a wide range of topics, including expected and unexpected behavior of quantum programs, testing techniques, program analysis approaches, optimizations, and benchmarks for testing and analyzing quantum software. We create novel connections between the discussed topics and present them in an accessible way. Finally, we discuss key challenges and open problems to inspire future research.