Ignacio García-Rodríguez de Guzmán

The increasing complexity of quantum software presents significant challenges for software verification and validation, particularly in the context of unit testing. This work presents a comprehensive study on quantum-centric unit tests, comparing traditional statistical approaches with tests specifically designed for quantum circuits. These include tests that run only on a classical computer, such as the Statevector test, as well as those executable on quantum hardware, such as the Swap test and the novel Inverse test. Through an empirical study and detailed analysis on 1,796,880 mutated quantum circuits, we investigate (a) each test's ability to detect subtle discrepancies between the expected and actual states of a quantum circuit, and (b) the number of measurements required to achieve high reliability. The results demonstrate that quantum-centric tests, particularly the Statevector test and the Inverse test, provide clear advantages in terms of precision and efficiency, reducing both false positives and false negatives compared to statistical tests. This work contributes to the development of more robust and scalable strategies for testing quantum software, supporting the future adoption of fault-tolerant quantum computers and promoting more reliable practices in quantum software engineering.

As quantum computers advance, the complexity of the software they can execute increases as well. To ensure this software is efficient, maintainable, reusable, and cost-effective—key qualities of any industry-grade software—mature software engineering practices must be applied throughout its design, development, and operation. However, the significant differences between classical and quantum software make it challenging to directly apply classical software engineering methods to quantum systems. This challenge has led to the emergence of Quantum Software Engineering (QSE) as a distinct field within the broader software engineering landscape. In this work, a group of active researchers analyze in depth the current state of QSE research. From this analysis, the key areas of QSE are identified and explored in order to determine the most relevant open challenges that should be addressed in the next years. These challenges help identify necessary breakthroughs and future research directions for advancing QSE.

Background: Quantum Computing (QC) represents a disruptive paradigm in computing, with significant implications across various domains such as medicine, logistics, chemistry, and defense. However, quantum software development—the discipline that enables the exploitation of QC's potential—faces considerable challenges due to the inherent complexity of quantum mechanics.Objective: This work aims to facilitate the systematic development of quantum software by introducing a method aligned with classical software engineering principles, particularly the analysis and synthesis phases, through the automated generation and optimization of quantum circuit components.Methods: The proposed approach focuses on the automated generation of quantum circuit components whose behavior can be formally described using truth tables. To this end, (i) a set of algorithms for the automatic generation of components is introduced, (ii) an optimization algorithm is developed to improve the efficiency of the generated components, and (iii) an automated support system is provided, allowing users to specify truth tables through multiple modeling strategies.Results: The resulting system enables a structured and automated process for building reusable quantum circuit components, reducing manual effort and supporting higher abstraction levels in quantum programming. The design of the system adheres to foundational principles of Software Engineering, including agnosticism and automatic code generation.Conclusions: This proposal contributes to quantum software development by providing a practical, engineering‐driven methodology for generating and optimizing quantum circuit components, thereby improving the efficiency, scalability, and accessibility of quantum programming practices.

Este estudio explora cómo la Ingeniería del Software Clásico, especialmente la ingeniería dirigida por modelos en testing, puede contribuir a la mejora de la Ingeniería del Software Cuántico (Quantum Software Engineering, QSE). Adoptando principios de "agnosticismo", se busca desarrollar procesos de ingeniería del software que sean independientes de cualquier lenguaje o plataforma específicos para software cuántico. Actualmente, el testing de software cuántico se considera un área emergente con múltiples propuestas focalizadas en lenguajes o plataformas particulares. Este trabajo propone una extensión del UML Testing Profile 2.0 para modelar pruebas de software cuántico, permitiendo (i) la exploración de nuevos conceptos necesarios para especificar estas pruebas, (ii) el modelado de diferentes tipos de pruebas durante el diseño del software cuántico, y (iii) la especificación de pruebas independiente del lenguaje o plataforma de ejecución. Esta aproximación busca establecer una base más flexible y extensible para el testing en QSE.