Integrating Quantum Computing into Workflow Modeling and Execution

Quantum computing has the potential to significantly impact many application domains, as several quantum algorithms are promising to solve problems more efficiently than possible on classical computers. However, various complex pre- and post-processing tasks have to be performed when executing a quantum circuit, which require immense mathematical and technical knowledge. For example, calculations on today’s quantum computers are noisy and require an error mitigation task after the execution. Hence, integrating classical applications with quantum circuits is a difficult challenge. In this paper, we introduce a modeling extension for imperative workflow languages to enable the integration of quantum computations and ease the orchestration of classical applications and quantum circuits. Further, we show how the extension can be mapped to native modeling constructs of extended workflow languages to retain the portability of the workflows. We validate the practical feasibility of our approach by applying our proposed extension to BPMN and introduce Quantum4BPMN.