Property checking of quantum circuits using quantum multiple-valued decision diagrams

Abstract

For the validation and verification of quantum circuits mainly techniques based on simulation are applied. Although lots of effort has been put into the improvement of these techniques, ensuring the correctness still requires an exhaustive consideration of all input vectors. As a result, these techniques are particularly insufficient to prove a circuit to be error free. As an alternative, we present a symbolic formal verification method that is based on Quantum Multiple-Valued Decision Diagrams (QMDDs), a data-structure allowing for a compact representation of quantum circuits. As a result, using QMDDs it is possible to check the correctness of a circuit without exhaustively considering all input patterns. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.