The Language-Integrated Quantum Operations (LIQUi|〉) simulator

News

2016/05/03 QuAM soure code released

In UserCode\DaveWecker there's a new release of source code for the QuAM example that's built in to LIQUi|〉. See the README.md file in the same directory for details. We also exposed a few more APIs to help make this and other examples easier to code.

2016/04/23 QLSA soure code released

In UserCode\DaveWecker there's a new release of source code for the QLSA example that's built in to LIQUi|〉. See the README.md file in the same directory for details.

2016/03/11 New introduction videos

Seven new short videos have been posted to the LIQUi|〉 Research site

2016/03/04 Outputting circuits for other Quantum Languages

We've uploaded sample code that shows how to print out circuits for other quantum languages. This specific example shows how to parse a circuit and generate QASM code. See UserCode example from DaveWecker

2016/02/04 The Microsoft Quantum Challenge

Microsoft Research is delighted to announce its first Quantum Challenge based on the simulator for Language-Integrated Quantum Operations: LIQUi|〉 from the QuArC Group. See http://aka.ms/quantumchallenge for full details. Closing date: April 29, 2016.

2016/02/01 New Version Available (time to re-install)

We are pleased to announce a major new version of LIQUi|〉 that has been re-written to be fully portable (currently on Windows, Linux and OSX). We have also improved the licensing process and have removed the registration steps completely. All future issues must be logged against this version, so we encourage anyone who has already installed the software to download the new version.

As always, we encourage you to join our (low volume) mailing list (instructions below) so you will directly receive announcements like these.

What Is LIQUi|〉?

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.

For More Information

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

How To Cite LIQUi|〉

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>|&#x232A;: A Software Design Architecure and Domain-Specific 
    Language for Quantum Computing,” (2014), arXiv:1402.4467v1 [quant-ph], 
    http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.4467.

What Can I Do With It?

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|〉. A video of a recent talk at IQC on the reserach we've done with the simulator is at https://youtu.be/Q6M0ueXLTak?t=1s

How Do I Get It?

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 and start using LIQUi|〉.

If you wish to use LIQUi|〉 on a Windows virtual machine, see the Using LIQUi|〉 on Microsoft Azure page for directions.

How Do I Use It?

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.

We've also posted seven short videos to the LIQUi|〉 Research site. These include:

• Station Q Overview
• LIQUi|〉 Simulator History
• The Quantum Challenge
• LIQUi|〉 Quantum Simulator QuickStart
• LIQUi|〉 Quantum Error Correction
• LIQUi|〉 Simulation Optimization
• LIQUi|〉 Quantum Chemistry

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.