Statistical Testing of Quantum Programs via Fixed-Point Amplitude Amplification

Abstract

We present a new technique for accelerating quantum program testing. Given a quantum circuit with an input/output specification, our goal is to check whether executing the program on the input state produces the expected output. In quantum computing, however, it is impossible to directly check the equivalence of the two quantum states. Instead, we rely on statistical testing, which involves repeated program executions, state measurements, and subsequent comparisons with the specified output. To guarantee a high level of assurance, however, this method requires an extensive number of measurements. In this paper, we propose a solution to alleviate this challenge by adapting Fixed-Point Amplitude Amplification (FPAA) for quantum program testing. We formally present our technique, demonstrate its ability to reduce the required number of measurements as well as runtime cost without sacrificing the original statistical guarantee, and showcase its runtime effectiveness through case studies.