Hoare meets Heisenberg: A Lightweight Logic for Quantum Programs
This work provides a practical verification tool for quantum programmers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing semantics.
The paper introduces a lightweight Hoare-like logic based on the Heisenberg representation for Clifford circuits, enabling efficient reasoning about quantum programs. Applications include certifying qubit disposal, checking separability, verifying gate transversality, and computing post-measurement states, with extensions to universal quantum computing via T-gates and Toffoli gates.
We show that Gottesman's (1998) semantics for Clifford circuits based on the Heisenberg representation gives rise to a lightweight Hoare-like logic for efficiently characterizing a common subset of quantum programs. Our applications include (i) certifying whether auxiliary qubits can be safely disposed of, (ii) determining if a system is separable across a given bipartition, (iii) checking the transversality of a gate with respect to a given stabilizer code, and (iv) computing post-measurement states for computational basis measurements. Further, this logic is extended to accommodate universal quantum computing by deriving Hoare triples for the $T$-gate, multiply-controlled unitaries such as the Toffoli gate, and some gate injection circuits that use associated magic states. A number of interesting results emerge from this logic, including a lower bound on the number of $T$ gates necessary to perform a multiply-controlled $Z$ gate.