QuCheck: A Property-based Testing Framework for Quantum Programs in Qiskit

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Pontolillo, Gabriel, Mousavi, Mohammad Reza, Grzesiuk, Marek
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Pontolillo, Gabriel
Mousavi, Mohammad Reza
Grzesiuk, Marek
author_facet Pontolillo, Gabriel
Mousavi, Mohammad Reza
Grzesiuk, Marek
contents Property-based testing has been previously proposed for quantum programs in Q# with QSharpCheck; however, this implementation was limited in functionality, lacked extensibility, and was evaluated on a narrow range of programs using a single property. To address these limitations, we propose QuCheck, an enhanced property-based testing framework in Qiskit. By leveraging Qiskit and the broader Python ecosystem, QuCheck facilitates property construction, introduces flexible input generators and assertions, and supports expressive preconditions. We assessed its effectiveness through mutation analysis on five quantum programs (2-10 qubits), varying the number of properties, inputs, and measurement shots to assess their impact on fault detection and demonstrate the effectiveness of property-based testing across a range of conditions. Results show a strong positive correlation between the mutation score (a measure of fault detection) and number of properties evaluated, with a moderate negative correlation between the false positive rate and number of measurement shots. Among the most thorough test configurations, those evaluating three properties achieved a mean mutation score ranging from 0.90 to 0.92 across all five algorithms, with the false positive rate between 0 and 0.04. QuCheck identified 36.0% more faults than QSharpCheck, with execution time reduced by 81.1%, despite one false positive. These findings underscore the viability of property-based testing for verifying quantum systems.
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publishDate 2025
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spellingShingle QuCheck: A Property-based Testing Framework for Quantum Programs in Qiskit
Pontolillo, Gabriel
Mousavi, Mohammad Reza
Grzesiuk, Marek
Quantum Physics
Software Engineering
Property-based testing has been previously proposed for quantum programs in Q# with QSharpCheck; however, this implementation was limited in functionality, lacked extensibility, and was evaluated on a narrow range of programs using a single property. To address these limitations, we propose QuCheck, an enhanced property-based testing framework in Qiskit. By leveraging Qiskit and the broader Python ecosystem, QuCheck facilitates property construction, introduces flexible input generators and assertions, and supports expressive preconditions. We assessed its effectiveness through mutation analysis on five quantum programs (2-10 qubits), varying the number of properties, inputs, and measurement shots to assess their impact on fault detection and demonstrate the effectiveness of property-based testing across a range of conditions. Results show a strong positive correlation between the mutation score (a measure of fault detection) and number of properties evaluated, with a moderate negative correlation between the false positive rate and number of measurement shots. Among the most thorough test configurations, those evaluating three properties achieved a mean mutation score ranging from 0.90 to 0.92 across all five algorithms, with the false positive rate between 0 and 0.04. QuCheck identified 36.0% more faults than QSharpCheck, with execution time reduced by 81.1%, despite one false positive. These findings underscore the viability of property-based testing for verifying quantum systems.
title QuCheck: A Property-based Testing Framework for Quantum Programs in Qiskit
topic Quantum Physics
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22641