Saboteur-Based Fault Injection for Quantum Circuits Fault Tolerance Assessment

The importance of reliability and fault tolerance is paramount in quantum computation. This paper proposes a Fault Tolerance Algorithms and Methodologies (FTAM) assessment technique for quantum circuits, by adopting the saboteur-based Simulated Fault Injection methodology from classical computation. By drawing the inspiration from classical computation, the HDLs were employed for performing fault injection, due to their capacity of behavioral and structural circuit description, including hierarchical features. The cornerstone of this approach is the adaptation of the available quantum computation error models (with the quantum computing features and constraints) to the classical, HDL framework of the simulated fault injection techniques. The experimental simulated fault injection campaign results are consistent with the analytical assessments -from a qualitative point of view - but at the same time they provide a much realistic description.