Why Are We Unrolling? The Importance of Structured Quantum Programs for Compilation

Quantum Physics arXiv:2609.16171 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 14 Sep 2026] Title:Why Are We Unrolling? The Importance of Structured Quantum Programs for Compilation Authors:Damian Rovara, Daniel Haag, Mark Koch, Josh Izaac, Seyon Sivarajah, Robert Wille, Augustín Borgna, Lukas Burgholzer, Brad Chase, Olivia Di Matteo, David Ittah View a PDF of the paper titled Why Are We Unrolling? The Importance of Structured Quantum Programs for Compilation, by Damian Rovara and 10 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:As quantum software stacks scale up to support future fault-tolerant quantum hardware and algorithms, quantum compilation is becoming an increasingly important component of the stack. How do we ensure that our software stacks support dynamic algorithms, including patterns such as mid-circuit measurement feedforward and repeat-until-success, with hundreds of logical qubits and billions of quantum operations? To do so, we must re-think how we represent quantum programs beyond straight-line circuits, to representations that include classical structure and dynamism, and make this the default representation to consider when performing quantum compilation. In this work, we present important patterns and algorithms from fault-tolerant quantum applications which admit a structured representation that we argue is crucial to preserve, and set a challenge to the community to compile such representations without unrolling them into straight-line quantum circuits. We also explore the status quo of structured program support in quantum software, and ask ourselves the rhetorical question: how much more efficient can we make quantum compilation tooling when we take into account the additional information from classical structure? Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2609.16171 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2609.16171v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.16171 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Daniel Haag [view email] [v1] Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:07:52 UTC (45 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Why Are We Unrolling? The Importance of Structured Quantum Programs for Compilation, by Damian Rovara and 10 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-09 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)