Embedding Quantum Program Verification into Dafny

Despite recent development of quantum program verification, it is still in its early stage, where many quantum programs are hard to verify due to their inherent probabilistic nature and parallelism in quantum superposition. We propose Qafny C , a system that compiles quantum program verification into a well-established classical program verifier Dafny, enabling the formal verification of quantum programs. The key insight behind Qafny C is the separation of quantum program verification from its execution, leveraging the strength of classical verifiers to ensure correctness before compiling certified quantum programs into executable circuits. Using Qafny C , we have successfully verified 37 diverse quantum programs by compiling their verification into Dafny. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive formally verified set of quantum programs.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Published
2025-10-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3763157
Primary Topic
Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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Embedding Quantum Program Verification into Dafny

Alex Potanin, Liyi Li, Feifei Cheng, Sushen Vallabh Vangeepuram et al.
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
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Embedding Quantum Program Verification into Dafny

Alex Potanin, Liyi Li, Feifei Cheng, Sushen Vallabh Vangeepuram, Henry Allard, Seyed Mohammad Reza Jafari
article en

Abstract

Despite recent development of quantum program verification, it is still in its early stage, where many quantum programs are hard to verify due to their inherent probabilistic nature and parallelism in quantum superposition. We propose Qafny C , a system that compiles quantum program verification into a well-established classical program verifier Dafny, enabling the formal verification of quantum programs. The key insight behind Qafny C is the separation of quantum program verification from its execution, leveraging the strength of classical verifiers to ensure correctness before compiling certified quantum programs into executable circuits. Using Qafny C , we have successfully verified 37 diverse quantum programs by compiling their verification into Dafny. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive formally verified set of quantum programs.

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming LanguagesVol. 9(OOPSLA2)
Australian National University (AU), Iowa State University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 85%
Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
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