v0.9.0 - King Pescheor

Simulation rework

The local simulation layer has received a major refactoring to make it better, faster and stronger. Multiple bugs were fixed, several new features were introduced and the computation was optimized (especially the noisy simulation algorithm):

• Noisy source simulation algorithm was rewritten to gain up to a x1000 speed up with standard noise parameters; a precision threshold can be adjusted to gain even more!
• Fixed an issue where distinguishable photons could lead to wrong probability computations
• Probability amplitudes and state evolution can now be computed with annotated states (distinguishable photons)
• Loss Channel (LC) components correctly handle distinguishable photons
• Polarized circuits and states simulation is implemented on the Processor layer
• Fixed a use case where a single SLOS backend instance used for several simulations in a row could lead to wrong probability amplitudes

Of course, such a rework comes with cons, as several class API changed a bit. Please check https://perceval.quandela.net/docs/legacy.html for details.

New features

• Batch jobs
  There is now a way of setting up multiple acquisitions / simulations using a single job with the Sampler.
  See: https://perceval.quandela.net/docs/algorithms.html#batch-jobs

• The new StateGenerator class helps building complex state vectors in one line of code.
  See: https://perceval.quandela.net/docs/reference/stategenerator.html

• The new StatevectorConverter class enables converting a Perceval StateVector to and from a QuTip QObj and a qiskit Statevector
  See the usage example from graph states generation to display: https://perceval.quandela.net/docs/notebooks/Graph%20States%20and%20representation.html

• LaTex renderer: circuits and processors can now be rendered as LaTex code (using Tikz)

Improvements

• A new Perceval usage example is available: The shortest path problem using QUBO
• A CZ gate is available in the component catalog
• The QiskitConverter supports CZ gates
• The serialization layer can now compress serialized representation of objects. The feature is enabled by default for circuits given a major space gain is observed.
• Jobs are grouped by a Process ID on Quandela Cloud
• Jobs retrieve more information from the Quandela Cloud (when created and resumed)
• The maximum number of supported modes has increased from 63 to 256
• BSDistribution now supports product and power operators
• BasicState.separate_state method now allows to keep the annotation information

Bug fixes

• Displaying a StateVector would unexpectedly force its normalization
• Fixed both the post-processed and heralded CNOT gates from the component catalog

Known issues

• exqalibur is unusable on some Ubuntu virtual machines hosted by VirtualBox