Abstract Quantum software—like classic software—needs to be designed, specified, developed, and, most importantly, tested by developers. Writing tests is a complex, error-prone, and time-consuming task. Due to the particular properties of quantum physics (e.g., superposition), quantum software is inherently more complex to develop and effectively test than classical software. Nevertheless, some preliminary works have tried to bring commonly used classical testing practices for quantum computing to assess and improve the quality of quantum programs. In this chapter, we first gather 16 quantum software testing techniques that have been proposed for the IBM quantum framework, Qiskit. Then, whenever possible, we illustrate the usage of each technique (through the proposed tool that implements it, if available) on a given running example. We showcase that although several works have been proposed to ease the burn of testing quantum software, we are still in the early stages of testing in the quantum world. Researchers should focus on delivering artifacts that are usable without much hindrance to the rest of the community, and the development of quantum benchmarks should be a priority to facilitate reproducibility, replicability, and comparison between different testing techniques.
Abstract Quantum software—like classic software—needs to be designed, specified, developed, and, most importantly, tested by developers. Writing tests is a complex, error-prone, and time-consuming task. Due to the particular properties of quantum physics (e.g., superposition), quantum software is inherently more complex to develop and effectively test than classical software. Nevertheless, some preliminary works have tried to bring commonly used classical testing practices for quantum computing to assess and improve the quality of quantum programs. In this chapter, we first gather 16 quantum software testing techniques that have been proposed for the IBM quantum framework, Qiskit. Then, whenever possible, we illustrate the usage of each technique (through the proposed tool that implements it, if available) on a given running example. We showcase that although several works have been proposed to ease the burn of testing quantum software, we are still in the early stages of testing in the quantum world. Researchers should focus on delivering artifacts that are usable without much hindrance to the rest of the community, and the development of quantum benchmarks should be a priority to facilitate reproducibility, replicability, and comparison between different testing techniques.
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 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.
Quantum computing will make it possible to exponentially accelerate the performance of a wide range of computational problems, such as cryptography, machine learning or chemical simulation. However, the quantum potential is not only a matter of hardware, but also of software. Therefore, this new paradigm has an impact yet to be explored on software development processes and techniques, and the adaptation of classical software engineering to the new classical/quantum hybrid systems raises a number of important challenges: a new Quantum Software Engineering is therefore needed. Specifically, and focusing on quantum software quality, software verification remains an open research question, as its novelty and complexity make quantum software development a particularly error-prone process. Most current approaches to test-driven verification rely heavily on simulations, which is a problem due to the lack of scalability of simulators running on classical computers. To address this shortcoming, we define the concept of a "Quantum Test Case", and then present a method to test quantum circuits on real machines, without using simulation test functionalities such as amplitude calculation or non-destructive measurement. This is achieved by automatically generating a Quantum Test Case, which wraps the circuit under test and performs the verification. We also present the process to run a set of tests on a circuit with this method, along with an example to illustrate the technique.
Quantum technology works with and relies on sub-atomic particles or physics that operates on the quantum level. Quantum computing has become a mature field, having diversified applications in supply chain and logistics, chemistry, economics and financial services, energy and agriculture, medicine and health, etc. In the recent years, companies have started to incorporate quantum software to benefit the research and the practitioner communities. Software engineering and programming practices need to be brought into the domain of quantum computing. Quantum algorithms provide the ability to analyze the data and offer simulations based on the data. A few of the quantum computing programming languages include QISKit, Q#, Cirq, and forest are used to write and run quantum programs. In this chapter, the authors provide an overall picture of the problems and challenges of developing quantum software and up-to-date software engineering processes, methods, techniques, practices, and principles for the development of quantum software to both researchers and practitioners.
Quantum software testing introduces new challenges that differ fundamentally from those in classical software engineering. Aims: This study investigates how the quantum software industry defines testing roles and what skills are expected from professionals in these positions. Method: We analyzed 110 job postings from organizations involved in quantum software and hardware development, identifying activities, competencies, and skill requirements related to testing. Results: The findings show that testing in quantum contexts combines traditional software quality assurance with experimental validation, emphasizing calibration, control, and hybrid quantum-classical verification. Employers seek professionals who integrate programming and automation expertise with quantum-specific technical knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration skills. Conclusions: Quantum software testing remains at an early but rapidly evolving stage that bridges software engineering and experimental physics, highlighting the need for educational and research efforts that align testing practices with industrial realities.
The implementation of quantum algorithms is attracting a lot of attention from the research community, mainly due to the technical advances made and the democratization of access to quantum computers. However, it is important for researchers and practitioners to learn from the methodologies of the classical-computing world in order to ensure the completeness, correctness, and validation of the produced software. Arguably, taking the right steps would contribute to the correct progress of this still-young field, aiming not to lose the attraction of the industry. With this motivation in mind, we provide in this paper a brief review of tools currently available to cope with the testing of quantum software. As part of this review, we have also detected possible gaps and opportunities that could be useful for the current community.