Fault testing quantum switching circuits

Abstract

Test pattern generation is an electronic design automation tool that attempts to find an input (or test) sequence that, when applied to a digital circuit, enables one to distinguish between the correct circuit behaviour and the faulty behaviour caused by particular faults. The effectiveness of this classical method is measured by the fault coverage achieved for the fault model and the number of generated vectors, which should be directly proportional to test application time. This work address the quantum process validation problem by considering the quantum mechanical adaptation of test pattern generation methods used to test classical circuits. We found that quantum mechanics allows one to execute multiple test vectors concurrently, making each gate realized in the process act on a complete set of characteristic states in space/time complexity that breaks classical testability lower bounds.