Development of a Tool for Finding Equivalent Mutants in Quantum Program: A Perspective to Measure the Quality of Quantum Software

Abstract

Software testing is an important activity to ensure the software's quality. Mutation testing is a fault-based technique for checking the effectiveness of test cases for the verification and validation of software. Testing quantum programs is challenging due to the involvement of quantum mechanics concepts (such as superposition and entanglement ) and the probabilistic nature of the outcome. In this paper, We will propose the modified mutation testing approach for quantum program. The proposed approach will help to reduce the cost, time, and effort of performing the mutation testing. Moreover, we also propose a method for determining the equivalent mutant and developing a tool to check whether the mutated and original quantum program behave semantically equivalent or differently.