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Modeling Quantum programs: challenges, initial results, and research directions

Published: 04 December 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Quantum programming languages provide necessary constructs to program quantum computers. To write such programs, one needs to understand the characteristics of quantum computers such as superposition and entanglement, which are novel as compared to programming with classical computers. Understanding these characteristics requires an understanding of quantum physics. Thus, there is a need to build high-level modeling abstractions of quantum programs for software engineers who are used to program on classical computers to understand and model quantum programs at a high-level of abstraction and independent of quantum platforms. To this end, we present some ideas for developing such quantum software modeling languages, by presenting a conceptual model of quantum programs and an example of modeling the state-based behavior of quantum entanglement program. Moreover, we present some open issues in the area of modeling quantum programs.

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cover image ACM Conferences
APEQS 2020: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Architectures and Paradigms for Engineering Quantum Software
November 2020
30 pages
ISBN:9781450381000
DOI:10.1145/3412451
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 04 December 2020

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Author Tags

  1. Quantum Programming Languages
  2. Quantum Programs
  3. Quantum States
  4. Software Modeling

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  • (2024)Quff: A Dynamically Typed Hybrid Quantum-Classical Programming LanguageProceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Managed Programming Languages and Runtimes10.1145/3679007.3685063(65-81)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Testing Multi-Subroutine Quantum Programs: From Unit Testing to Integration TestingACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/365633933:6(1-61)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Quantum Software Engineering: Practical ChallengesInternational Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering10.1142/S021819402441002X34:09(1387-1413)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2024
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