A Theory of Cartesian Arrays (with Applications in Quantum Circuit Verification)

Abstract

We present a theory of Cartesian arrays, which are multi-dimensional arrays with support for the projection of arrays to sub-arrays, as well as for updating sub-arrays. The resulting logic is an extension of Combinatorial Array Logic (CAL) and is motivated by the analysis of quantum circuits: using projection, we can succinctly encode the semantics of quantum gates as quantifier-free formulas and verify the end-to-end correctness of quantum circuits. Since the logic is expressive enough to represent quantum circuits succinctly, it necessarily has a high complexity; as we show, it suffices to encode the k-color problem of a graph under a succinct circuit representation, an NEXPTIME-complete problem. We present an NEXPTIME decision procedure for the logic and report on preliminary experiments with the analysis of quantum circuits using this decision procedure.