A Sample-Driven Solving Procedure for the Repeated Reachability of Quantum Continuous-Time Markov Chains

Reachability analysis plays a central role in system design and verification. The reachability problem, denoted ◇^J Φ, asks whether the system will meet the property Φ after some time in a given time interval J. Recently, it has been considered on a novel kind of real-time systems — quantum continuous-time Markov chains (QCTMCs), and embedded into the model-checking algorithm. In this paper, we further study the repeated reachability problem in QCTMCs, denoted □^I ◇^J Φ, which concerns whether the system starting from each absolute time in I will meet the property Φ after some coming relative time in J. First of all, we reduce it to the real root isolation of a class of real-valued functions (exponential polynomials), whose solvability is conditional to Schanuel’s conjecture being true. To speed up the procedure, we employ the strategy of sampling. The original problem is shown to be equivalent to the existence of a finite collection of satisfying samples. We then present a sample-driven procedure, which can effectively refine the sample space after each time of sampling, no matter whether the sample itself is satisfying or conflicting. The improvement on efficiency is validated by randomly generated instances. Hence the proposed method would be promising to attack the repeated reachability problems together with checking other ω-regular properties in a wide scope of real-time systems.