VanQiRA: A Vanishing-State-Based Framework for Quantum Circuit Runtime Assertion

Runtime verification is crucial in quantum computation as quantum systems are susceptible to environmental perturbation. Automating the detection of runtime errors allows an early fallback or correction and can drastically improve the efficiency of quantum computation experiments. However, prior work is either limited to asserting specific quantum states or ad hoc assertion circuit construction. We overcome these limitations by exploiting vanishing states as a general framework, which is flexible in providing trade-offs between error-detection power and assertion circuit complexity. Experiments show the unique benefits of our method in generality and effectiveness, improving quantum circuit execution efficiency and success rates in various benchmarks.