LIQUi|〉 is a simulation platform developed by the Quantum Architectures and Computation team at Microsoft Research to aid in the exploration of quantum computation.
LIQUi|〉 stands for “Language Integrated Quantum Operations”.
A quantum operation is usually referred to as a unitary operator (U) applied to a column state vector (also known as a ket: |> ).
The “i” is just a constant scaling factor, hence the acronym.
LIQUi|〉 includes three simulators:
- A full state vector simulator that tracks the detailed evolution of the quantum state
- A stabilizer simulator based on CHP (Aaronson and Gottesman, http://arXiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0406196)
- A highly-optimized full state vector simulator for fermionic Hamiltonians
LIQUi|〉 is available under a Microsoft Research license.
See the Microsoft Research project page on LIQUi|〉 and the paper, LIQUi|〉: A Software Design Architecture and Domain-Specific Language for Quantum Computing.
To stay up to date on what we're doing with LIQUi|〉, please watch our repository and sign up for the LIQUi|〉 email list. To sign up, send an email to LISTSERV@lists.research.microsoft.com with a one-line body reading:
SUB Liquid-news FirstName LastName
Replacing FirstName and LastName with your first and last names. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you may instead send an email containing:
SUB Liquid-news anonymous
If you use LIQUi|〉 in your research, please cite it as follows:
- bibTex:
@misc{1402.4467,
author = {Dave Wecker and Krysta M.~Svore},
title = {{LIQU}i|>: {A} {S}oftware {D}esign {A}rchitecture and {D}omain-{S}pecific
{L}anguage for {Q}uantum {C}omputing},
year = {2014},
eprint = {1402.4467},
url = {arXiv:1402.4467v1}
}
- Text:
D. Wecker and K. M. Svore, “LIQ<i>Ui</i>|〉: A Software Design Architecure and Domain-Specific
Language for Quantum Computing,” (2014), arXiv:1402.4467v1 [quant-ph],
http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4467.
You can use LIQUi|〉 to define quantum circuits, render them into a variety of graphical formats, and execute them using an appropriate simulator.
Some of the specific algorithms you can simulate with LIQUi|〉 are:
- Simple quantum teleportation
- Shor's factoring algorithm
- Quantum chemistry: computing the ground state energy of a molecule
- Quantum error correction
- Quantum associative memory (Ventura and Martinez, http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9807053)
- Quantum linear algebra (Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd, http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3171)
All of these algorithms, and many more, are included as samples with LIQUi|〉.
You can download the LIQUi|〉 executable, libraries, sample scripts, and documentation from this site.
See the Getting Started page for directions on how to download, register, and start using LIQUi|〉.
If you don't have access to a Windows environment, you can use LIQUi|〉 on a Windows virtual machine. See the Using LIQUi|〉 on Microsoft Azure page for directions.
See the users' guide and the full help documentation. The help may also be downloaded as a single file, if desired. There is also a tutorial video available that will take you through the basics.
Note that this version of LIQUi|〉 is limited to a maximum of 23 physical qubits for full state vector simulation.
If you run into a problem or have a question, you can post an issue. If you have other feedback, you can contact the LIQUi|〉 team at liquid@microsoft.com.