When Abstraction Breaks Physics: Rethinking Modular Design in Quantum Software
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866915738856456192 |
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| author | Zhao, Jianjun |
| author_facet | Zhao, Jianjun |
| contents | Abstraction is a fundamental principle in classical software engineering, which enables modularity, reusability, and scalability. However, quantum programs adhere to fundamentally different semantics, such as unitarity, entanglement, the no-cloning theorem, and the destructive nature of measurement, which introduce challenges to the safe use of classical abstraction mechanisms. This paper identifies a fundamental conflict in quantum software engineering: abstraction practices that are syntactically valid may violate the physical constraints of quantum computation. We present three classes of failure cases where naive abstraction breaks quantum semantics and propose a set of design principles for physically sound abstraction mechanisms. We further propose research directions, including quantum-specific type systems, effect annotations, and contract-based module design. Our goal is to initiate a systematic rethinking of abstraction in quantum software engineering, based on quantum semantics and considering engineering scalability. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_18557 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | When Abstraction Breaks Physics: Rethinking Modular Design in Quantum Software Zhao, Jianjun Software Engineering Quantum Physics Abstraction is a fundamental principle in classical software engineering, which enables modularity, reusability, and scalability. However, quantum programs adhere to fundamentally different semantics, such as unitarity, entanglement, the no-cloning theorem, and the destructive nature of measurement, which introduce challenges to the safe use of classical abstraction mechanisms. This paper identifies a fundamental conflict in quantum software engineering: abstraction practices that are syntactically valid may violate the physical constraints of quantum computation. We present three classes of failure cases where naive abstraction breaks quantum semantics and propose a set of design principles for physically sound abstraction mechanisms. We further propose research directions, including quantum-specific type systems, effect annotations, and contract-based module design. Our goal is to initiate a systematic rethinking of abstraction in quantum software engineering, based on quantum semantics and considering engineering scalability. |
| title | When Abstraction Breaks Physics: Rethinking Modular Design in Quantum Software |
| topic | Software Engineering Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18557 |