Runtime Analysis of Quantum Programs: A Formal Approach

ALEJANDRO DÍAZ CARO; FEDERICO OLMEDO

New Orleans, Louisiana

Workshop; PLanQC 2020: Programming Languages for Quantum Computing; 2020

University of Maryland

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.