A tutorial introduction to quantum circuit programming in dependently typed Proto-Quipper Peng Fu1, Kohei Kishida2, Neil J. Ross1, and Peter Selinger1 1 Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada ffrank-fu,neil.jr.ross,
[email protected] 2 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, U.S.A.
[email protected] Abstract. We introduce dependently typed Proto-Quipper, or Proto- Quipper-D for short, an experimental quantum circuit programming lan- guage with linear dependent types. We give several examples to illustrate how linear dependent types can help in the construction of correct quan- tum circuits. Specifically, we show how dependent types enable program- ming families of circuits, and how dependent types solve the problem of type-safe uncomputation of garbage qubits. We also discuss other lan- guage features along the way. Keywords: Quantum programming languages · Linear dependent types · Proto-Quipper-D 1 Introduction Quantum computers can in principle outperform conventional computers at cer- tain crucial tasks that underlie modern computing infrastructures. Experimental quantum computing is in its early stages and existing devices are not yet suitable for practical computing. However, several groups of researchers, in both academia and industry, are now building quantum computers (see, e.g., [2,11,16]). Quan- tum computing also raises many challenging questions for the programming lan- guage community [17]: How should we design programming languages for quan- tum computation? How should we compile and optimize quantum programs? How should we test and verify quantum programs? How should we understand the semantics of quantum programming languages? In this paper, we focus on quantum circuit programming using the linear dependently typed functional language Proto-Quipper-D.