English

Quantum Relational Hoare Logic

Quantum Physics 2019-01-16 v2 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

We present a logic for reasoning about pairs of interactive quantum programs - quantum relational Hoare logic (qRHL). This logic follows the spirit of probabilistic relational Hoare logic (Barthe et al. 2009) and allows us to formulate how the outputs of two quantum programs relate given the relationship of their inputs. Probabilistic RHL was used extensively for computer-verified security proofs of classical cryptographic protocols. Since pRHL is not suitable for analyzing quantum cryptography, we present qRHL as a replacement, suitable for the security analysis of post-quantum cryptography and quantum protocols. The design of qRHL poses some challenges unique to the quantum setting, e.g., the definition of equality on quantum registers. Finally, we implemented a tool for verifying proofs in qRHL and developed several example security proofs in it.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.03188,
  title  = {Quantum Relational Hoare Logic},
  author = {Dominique Unruh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.03188},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Extended abstract appeared at POPL 2019

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:16:52.354Z