Runtime Analysis of Quantum Programs: A Formal Approach

11/25/2019

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by   Federico Olmedo, et al.

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In this extended abstract we provide a first step towards a tool to estimate the resource consumption of programs. We specifically focus on the runtime analysis of programs and, inspired by recent methods for probabilistic programs, we develop a calculus à la weakest precondition to formally and systematically derive the (exact) runtime of quantum programs. Notably, the calculus admits a notion of loop runtime invariant that can be readily used to derive upper bounds of their runtime. To conclude, we show the applicability of our calculus analyzing the runtime of an algorithm based on the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol.