The advantages of quantum computing have been demonstrated across many application fields, and the development of increasingly powerful hardware platforms is enabling wider adoption of quantum solutions in real-world tasks. However, a significant limitation to applying the quantum paradigm to real problems is the difficulty in designing solutions using quantum computational blocks. We illustrate an innovative approach that allows for the description of a solution using a high-level language, which can be translated into a set of appropriate quantum gates to perform the desired computation. We present a system based on quantum computational logic proposed by Dalla Chiara et al. to represent a quantum computation within a Prolog environment. In this system, a logic formula is translated into a quantum-operable formulation, following the logic’s holistic semantics. Preliminary examples illustrate the method’s application.
The advantages of quantum computing have been demonstrated across many application fields, and the development of increasingly powerful hardware platforms is enabling wider adoption of quantum solutions in real-world tasks. However, a significant limitation to applying the quantum paradigm to real problems is the difficulty in designing solutions using quantum computational blocks. We illustrate an innovative approach that allows for the description of a solution using a high-level language, which can be translated into a set of appropriate quantum gates to perform the desired computation. We present a system based on quantum computational logic proposed by Dalla Chiara et al. to represent a quantum computation within a Prolog environment. In this system, a logic formula is translated into a quantum-operable formulation, following the logic’s holistic semantics. Preliminary examples illustrate the method’s application.
Quantum computing has been shown to provide exponential performance improvements in several tasks, such as cryptography, healthcare, etc. This article presents a new framework for quantum high-level synthesis, called QHLS, that aims to facilitate programmers using quantum computers. Currently, quantum-computer programmers need extensive linear algebra and quantum mechanics knowledge, which can be challenging for traditional software programmers. Additionally, the current quantum programming paradigm is not scalable, and it can be difficult to combine quantum circuits to create a more complex functionality. QHLS addresses these issues by enabling the automatic generation of quantum circuit descriptions directly from high-level behavioral specifications (using languages like C or C++). This simplifies the programming of a quantum computer, making it more accessible to a wider range of programmers. Our experiments show that QHLS can successfully translate high-level software programs containing various types of statements (such as arithmetic, logical, and conditional operations) into functionally equivalent quantum circuits.
Current quantum programs are mainly designed at the level of quantum gates acting on individual qubits; on a large scale and for complex problems this may involve a high cognitive load on the programmer, making the program specification nontrivial and error-prone. In this context, providing quantum programming with higher abstraction mechanisms will assist in making this task more manageable and robust against design errors. In this work, a conceptual framework is addressed following the notion of the whole quantum computation as a structure composed of quantum registers representing each an undivided entity. Thus, computation progresses through semantically well-defined transformations that act on, or entangle, quantum registers, thereby modifying the global state. Ultimately, the program reaches the desired state by following a specific composition strategy. With this in mind, high-level syntax is presented through an algebraic formalism that bridges them with their low-level semantics. Proposed syntax is based on certain well-know operations used on quantum algorithms that apply phase shifts upon logical condition satisfaction or leverage on parallel evaluation. Based solely on the formalized operations, a quantum satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver can be designed. At its core, this work contributes to establishing some methodological principles towards realizing a high-level quantum structured programming.
Although the concept of quantum computing has existed for decades, the technology needed to successfully implement a quantum computing system has not yet reached the level of sophistication, reliability, and scalability necessary for commercial viability until very recently. Significant progress on this front was made in the past few years, with IBM planning to create a 1000-qubit chip by the end of 2023, and Google already claiming to have achieved quantum supremacy. Other major industry players such as Intel and Microsoft have also invested significant amounts of resources into quantum computing research. Any viable computing system requires both hardware and software to work together harmoniously in order to perform useful computations. While the achievements of IBM and other companies represent a large step forward for quantum hardware, many gaps remain to be filled with respect to the corresponding software. Specifically, there is currently no clear path towards a complete process for translating quantum algorithms into physical operations that are directly executable on quantum hardware. Such a process is analogous to a compiler that translates programs written in a high-level language into executable machine instructions on a conventional digital computer, and it is necessary if quantum computers are to be harnessed to perform practically useful computations. Existing work has addressed individual components of this process, but so far no unified method for translating the whole of a quantum algorithm into executable operations has been described. I make substantial progress towards filling this gap by describing a set of high-level and low-level quantum circuit design techniques, which when taken together reduce the need of a circuit designer to be concerned with low-level details. On the high-level side, I describe an approach or strategy to designing quantum oracles for Grover's algorithm that allows it to be applied to several types of problems. This approach involves designing oracles in terms of high-level blocks such as counters, multiplexers, comparators, and arbitrary Boolean functions. The implementations of these blocks in terms of lower-level quantum gates are demonstrated in a way that makes it clear that scaled-up versions of them can be generated in a completely automated fashion. For a specific class of problems, which I call state-space path planning problems, I also introduce a paradigm for quantum oracle design that involves representing the problem in terms of individual states and moves. Problems of this sort have applications in robotics and games. Low-level techniques that I introduce
Abstract Quantum computing offers transformative capabilities by exploiting quantum mechanical principles to solve problems that are intractable for classical systems, particularly in areas like cryptography, optimization, and data analysis. However, most current quantum programming languages operate at a low level, requiring in-depth expertise in quantum mechanics and circuit theory, which presents a barrier to wider adoption. In this work, we introduce Qutes, a high-level quantum programming language that simplifies the development of quantum algorithms while preserving the flexibility needed for advanced applications. Qutes abstracts low-level quantum operations through intuitive syntax and high-level constructs, enabling developers to express complex algorithms without detailed circuit knowledge. Built atop Qiskit, Qutes transpiles seamlessly into executable code, ensuring compatibility with real quantum hardware. We present the architecture, language design, and hybrid classical-quantum integration of Qutes, and demonstrate its use through implementations of canonical quantum algorithms. Our results highlight Qutes’ potential to democratize quantum programming by lowering the entry threshold and accelerating prototyping for researchers and developers alike.
One of the logical proposals that arise from quantum computation is the idea to use the quantum theoretical formalism to represent parallel reasoning. To this aim a quantum computation is considered by means of convenient unitary operators assuming arguments and values in particular sets of qubit systems. Isolating some important unitary operators that have a special role in quantum computation (logical gates or quregisters) we obtain an opportunity to yield the language of Quantum Computational Logic (QCL) (cf. [Cattaneo et al., 2003; Cattaneo et al., 2004; Dalla Chiara et al., 2004]). The basic concept of the semantics of this language is the notion of quantum computational realization such that the meaning associated to any sentence is a quregister. Unlike the semantic of a standard quantum logic QCL-conjunction and QCL-disjunction do not correspond to lattice operations since they are not generally idempotent. Moreover, in QCL the weak distributivity principle breaks down and both the excluded middle and the non contradiction principles are violated. Finally, the axiomatizability of QCL is still an open problem. In the paper an axiomatization of QCL is proposed construing it as a kind of so-called Goldblatt’s binary logic. Some metalogical theorems (paraconsistency and completeness) are proved.
The theory of gates in quantum computation has suggested new forms of quantum logic, called quantum computational logics, where the meaning of a sentence is identified with a system of qubits in a pure or, more generally, mixed state. In this framework, any formula of the language gives rise to a quantum circuit that transforms the state associated to the atomic subformulas into the state associated to the formula and vice versa. On this basis, some holistic semantic situations can be described, where the meaning of whole determines the meaning of the parts, by non-linear and anti-unitary operators. We prove that the semantics with such operators and the semantics with unitary operators turn out to characterize the same logic.