ReQWIRE: Reasoning about Reversible Quantum Circuits

Common quantum algorithms make heavy use of ancillae: scratch qubits that are initialized at some state and later returned to that state and discarded. Existing quantum circuit languages let programmers assert that a qubit has been returned to the |0> state before it is discarded, allowing for a...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Robert Rand, Jennifer Paykin, Dong-Ho Lee, Steve Zdancewic
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Open Publishing Association 2019-01-01
Series:Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
Online Access:http://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.10118v1
Description
Summary:Common quantum algorithms make heavy use of ancillae: scratch qubits that are initialized at some state and later returned to that state and discarded. Existing quantum circuit languages let programmers assert that a qubit has been returned to the |0> state before it is discarded, allowing for a range of optimizations. However, existing languages do not provide the tools to verify these assertions, introducing a potential source of errors. In this paper we present methods for verifying that ancillae are discarded in the desired state, and use these methods to implement a verified compiler from classical functions to quantum oracles.
ISSN:2075-2180