Authors:
Macario Polo-Usaola
;
Manuel Serrano
and
Ignacio García-Rodríguez de Guzmán
Affiliation:
Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha, Spain
Keyword(s):
Quantum Computing, Mutation Testing, Quantum Software Testing.
Abstract:
Quantum technology is rapidly improving the capacity of quantum computers, increasing the number of cubits and fostering the development of quantum software capable of solving complex problems that, until now, were beyond the reach of the most powerful classical computers. Unfortunately, quantum computational capacity is growing faster than Quantum Software Engineering, which is necessary to avoid a new (quantum) software crisis. In this article, we focus on quantum software testing, with the specific goal of ensuring the quality of quantum software. For this purpose, we propose to apply the mutation-based software testing technique, applied to the context of quantum computing, since mutation has proven to be one of the most powerful tools to improve the quality of test suites. A set of quantum mutation operators have been developed to improve quantum test suites, and reduce the number of test cases required, which is important due to the cost of using quantum computers (and the need
to run each circuit multiple times to obtain reliable results due to their stochastic nature). A tool for automating the generation of quantum mutants from original quantum circuits is also presented.
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