We study the fundamental design automation problem of equivalence checking in the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) computing realm where quantum noise is present inevitably. The notion of approximate equivalence of (possibly noisy) quantum circuits is defined based on the Jamiolkowski fidelity which measures the average distance between output states of two super-operators when the input is chosen at random. By employing tensor network contraction, we present two algorithms, aiming at different situations where the number of noises varies, for computing the fidelity between an ideal quantum circuit and its noisy implementation. The effectiveness of our algorithms is demonstrated by experimenting on benchmarks of real NISQ circuits. When compared with the state-of-the-art implementation incorporated in Qiskit, experimental results show that the proposed algorithms outperform in both efficiency and scalability.
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