Microsoft’s Q# (q-sharp) language uses a quantum simulator as a part of Visual Studio 2017. The quantum simulator is a part of Microsoft’s open source platform LIQUi|> that is installed as a part of Microsoft Quantum Development Kit.
LIQUi|〉 (Language Integrated Quantum Operations) is developed by Microsoft Quantum Research team where Ui|> represents the operations. A quantum operation is usually referred to as a unitary operator (U) applied to a column state vector (also known as a ket: |>) and the “i” is a constant scaling factor.
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
A platform
LIQUi|〉 is a software platform that provides a language compiler (Q#), quantum simulators, optimizers, translators, and various simulators, and samples for developers to build quantum computing based application without needing a quantum computer.
LIQUi|> includes state-of-the-art circuit simulation of up to 30 qubits on a single machine with 32 GB RAM, limited only by memory and computing threads. The largest number factored to date on the simulator is a 13-bit number, which required 27 qubits, half a million gates, and 5 days runtime. The circuit was based on Beauregard’s circuit for Shor’s algorithm.
LIQUi|〉 is flexible, managed and cross-platform.
Flexible
It can run with built-in samples, from scripts, or as a runtime in a custom application.
Managed
It is based on .NET that manages memory with garbage collector and compiles code with a JIT complier.
Cross Platform
LIQUi|> supports multiple operating systems including Windows, OSX, and Linux.
What LIQUi|> can do
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)
- Quantum linear algebra (Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd)
All of these algorithms, and many more, are included as samples with LIQUi|>.
The complete platform is freely available on GitHub >
New to Quantum Computing?
Check out Introduction to Quantum Computing and Why Quantum Computing.