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arXiv:2504.01558 · Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Scalable Equivalence Checking and Verification of Shallow Quantum Circuits

Nengkun Yu, Xuan Du Trinh, Thomas Reps

Published Oct 9, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

This paper concerns the problem of checking if two shallow (i.e., constant-depth) quantum circuits perform equivalent computations. Equivalence checking is a fundamental correctness question—needed, e.g., for ensuring that transformations applied to a quantum circuit do not alter its behavior. For quantum circuits, the problem is challenging because a straightforward representation on a classical computer of each circuit’s quantum state can require time and space that are exponential in the number of qubits n . The paper presents Projection-Based Equivalence Checking (PBEC), which provides decision procedures for two variants of the equivalence-checking problem. Both can be carried out on a classical computer in time and space that, for any fixed depth, is linear in n . Our key insight is that local projections can serve as constraints that fully characterize the output state of a shallow quantum circuit. The output state is the unique quantum state that satisfies all the constraints. Beyond equivalence checking, we show how to use the constraint representation to check a class of assertions, both statically and at run time. Our assertion-checking methods are sound and complete for assertions expressed as conjunctions of local projections. Our experiments showed that computing the constraint representation of a random 100-qubit 1D circuit of depth 6 takes 129.64 seconds. Equivalence checking between two random 100-qubit 1D circuits of depth 3 requires 4.46 seconds for fixed input | 0 〉 ⊗ 100 , and no more than 31.96 seconds for arbitrary inputs. Computing the constraint description for a random 100-qubit circuit of depth 3 takes 6.99 seconds for a 2D structure, compared to 10.67 seconds for a circuit with arbitrary connectivity. At depth 2, equivalence checking takes 0.20 seconds for fixed input and 0.44 seconds for arbitrary input, with similar performance for both 2D and arbitrary-connectivity circuits.

DOI
10.1145/3763153

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This paper concerns the problem of checking if two shallow (i.e., constant-depth) quantum circuits perform equivalent computations. Equivalence checking is a fundamental correctness question—needed, e.g., for ensuring that transformations applied to a quantum circuit do not alter its behavior. For quantum circuits, the problem is challenging because a straightforward representation on a classical computer of each circuit’s quantum state can require time and space that are exponential in the number of qubits n . The paper presents Projection-Based Equivalence Checking (PBEC), which provides decision procedures for two variants of the equivalence-checking problem. Both can be carried out on a classical computer in time and space that, for any fixed depth, is linear in n . Our key insight is that local projections can serve as constraints that fully characterize the output state of a shallow quantum circuit. The output state is the unique quantum state that satisfies all the constraints. Beyond equivalence checking, we show how to use the constraint representation to check a class of assertions, both statically and at run time. Our assertion-checking methods are sound and complete for assertions expressed as conjunctions of local projections. Our experiments showed that computing the constraint representation of a random 100-qubit 1D circuit of depth 6 takes 129.64 seconds. Equivalence checking between two random 100-qubit 1D circuits of depth 3 requires 4.46 seconds for fixed input | 0 〉 ⊗ 100 , and no more than 31.96 seconds for arbitrary inputs. Computing the constraint description for a random 100-qubit circuit of depth 3 takes 6.99 seconds for a 2D structure, compared to 10.67 seconds for a circuit with arbitrary connectivity. At depth 2, equivalence checking takes 0.20 seconds for fixed input and 0.44 seconds for arbitrary input, with similar performance for both 2D and arbitrary-connectivity circuits.
Verifying whether two quantum circuits are equivalent is a central challenge in the compilation and optimization of quantum programs. We introduce \textsc{Manjushri}, a new automated framework for scalable quantum-circuit equivalence checking. \textsc{Manjushri} uses local projections as discriminative circuit fingerprints, implemented with weighted binary decision diagrams (WBDDs), yielding a compact and efficient symbolic representation of quantum behavior. We present an extensive experimental evaluation that, for random 1D Clifford+TTT circuits, explores the trade-off between \textsc{Manjushri} and \textsc{ECMC}, a tool for equivalence checking based on a much different approach. \textsc{Manjushri} is much faster up to depth 30 (with the crossover point varying from 39--49, depending on the number of qubits and whether the input circuits are equivalent or inequivalent): when inputs are equivalent, \textsc{Manjushri} is about 10×\times× faster (or more); when inputs are inequivalent, \textsc{Manjushri} is about 8×\times× faster (or more). For both kinds of equivalence-checking outcomes, \textsc{ECMC}'s success rate out to depth 50 is impressive on 32- and 64-qubit circuits: on such circuits, \textsc{ECMC} is almost uniformly successful. However, \textsc{ECMC} struggled on 128-qubit circuits for some depths. \textsc{Manjushri} is almost uniformly successful out to about depth 38, before tailing off to about 75\% at depth 50 (falling to 0\% at depth 48 for 128-qubit circuits that are equivalent). These results establish that \textsc{Manjushri} is a practical and scalable solution for large-scale quantum-circuit verification, and would be the preferred choice unless clients need to check equivalence of circuits of depth $>$38.
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Quantum circuit equivalence checking asks whether two circuits implement the same unitary. It guarantees compiler correctness and safe optimization, yet most existing approaches scale exponentially with the number of qubits or the circuit depth, or are restricted to specific circuit structures. In this work, we present an equivalence-checking method for circuits formed by arbitrary single-qubit layers interleaved with Clifford layers. This pattern is common in variational quantum algorithms and Hamiltonian simulation via Trotter decomposition. It can also represent any unitary with sufficient depth. We prove the existence of an efficient classical algorithm that determines whether a pair of circuits with shared single-qubit layers are equivalent for every possible choice of the shared single-qubit unitaries. The same algorithm can also certify their non-equivalence for fixed assignments of single-qubit unitaries. Our framework supports the validation of emerging quantum compilers and facilitate the discovery of novel circuit optimization passes.
We define a formal framework for equivalence checking of sequential quantum circuits. The model we adopt is a quantum state machine, which is a natural quantum generalization of Mealy machines. A major difficulty in checking quantum circuits (but not present in checking classical circuits) is that the state spaces of quantum circuits are continuums. This difficulty is resolved by our main theorem showing that equivalence checking of two quantum Mealy machines can be done with input sequences that are taken from some chosen basis (which are finite) and have a length quadratic in the dimensions of the state Hilbert spaces of the machines. Based on this theoretical result, we develop an (and to the best of our knowledge, the first) algorithm for checking equivalence of sequential quantum circuits with running timeO(23m+5l(23m + 23l))\mathcal {O}(2^{3m+5l}(2^{3m}{\,+\,}2^{3l}))O(23m+5l(23m+23l)), wheremmmandllldenote the numbers of input and internal qubits, respectively. The complexity of our algorithm is comparable with that of the known algorithms for checking classical sequential circuits in the sense that both are exponential in the number of (qu)bits. Several case studies and experiments are presented.
Circuit depth is a central resource in complexity theory. While bounded-depth classical circuits admit well-understood hierarchy theorems, the internal structure of constant-depth quantum computation remains comparatively unexplored. We prove an explicit depth hierarchy theorem for QNC0\mathsf{QNC}^0QNC0. For each d≥12d\ge 12d≥12, we construct a family of two-round interactive problems on which no depth-(d−1)(d-1)(d−1) quantum circuit can achieve near-perfect success, regardless of gate set, circuit size, or ancillary qubits. In contrast, we prove that our construction admits realizations by simple bounded fan-in quantum circuits of depth larger than ddd by a small constant factor. Moreover, all bounded fan-in classical circuits of sublogarithmic depth (in the input size) fail to achieve perfect success on these tasks for every ddd, yielding a hierarchy of problems that show unconditional quantum advantage of QNC0\mathsf{QNC}^0QNC0 over NC0\mathsf{NC}^0NC0. A key obstacle is the scarcity of lower bound techniques for quantum circuits. To address this, we develop methods to analyze how depth affects a circuit's ability to realize nonlocal correlations amongst its output qubits in a fine-grained manner. Our approach exploits the correspondence between constraint systems and nonlocal games, translating group-theoretic constructions into rigid operator-valued constraint systems and then into non-local games. In particular, we construct constraint systems whose unique faithful operator-valued solutions require every perfect strategy, and every near-perfect strategy to a fixed precision, to implement multi-controlled phase operations. This reduces to a nonlocal unitary-synthesis problem, yielding depth lower bounds for both shallow quantum and classical circuits. These results show that increasing depth strictly increases computational power within QNC0\mathsf{QNC}^0QNC0, establishing a genuinely quantum hierarchy.
Checking whether two quantum circuits are approximately equivalent is a common task in quantum computing. We consider a closely related identity check problem: given a quantum circuit UUU, one has to estimate the diamond-norm distance between UUU and the identity channel. We present a classical algorithm approximating the distance to the identity within a factor α=D+1α=D+1α=D+1 for shallow geometrically local DDD-dimensional circuits provided that the circuit is sufficiently close to the identity. The runtime of the algorithm scales linearly with the number of qubits for any constant circuit depth and spatial dimension. We also show that the operator-norm distance to the identity ∥U−I∥\|U-I\|∥U−I∥ can be efficiently approximated within a factor α=5α=5α=5 for shallow 1D circuits and, under a certain technical condition, within a factor α=2D+3α=2D+3α=2D+3 for shallow DDD-dimensional circuits. A numerical implementation of the identity check algorithm is reported for 1D Trotter circuits with up to 100 qubits.