Quantum Hamiltonian simulation, which simulates the evolution of quantum systems and probes quantum phenomena, is one of the most promising applications of quantum computing. Recent experimental results suggest that Hamiltonian-oriented analog quantum simulation would be advantageous over circuit-oriented digital quantum simulation in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) machine era. However, programming analog quantum simulators is much more challenging due to the lack of a unified interface between hardware and software. In this paper, we design and implement SimuQ, the first framework for quantum Hamiltonian simulation that supports Hamiltonian programming and pulse-level compilation to heterogeneous analog quantum simulators. Specifically, in SimuQ, front-end users specify the target quantum system with Hamiltonian Modeling Language, and the Hamiltonian-level programmability of analog quantum simulators is specified through a new abstraction called the abstract analog instruction set (AAIS) and programmed in AAIS Specification Language by hardware providers. Through a solver-based compilation, SimuQ generates executable pulse schedules for real devices to simulate the evolution of desired quantum systems, which is demonstrated on superconducting (IBM), neutral-atom (QuEra), and trapped-ion (IonQ) quantum devices. Moreover, we demonstrate the advantages of exposing the Hamiltonian-level programmability of devices with native operations or interaction-based gates and establish a small benchmark of quantum simulation to evaluate SimuQ's compiler with the above analog quantum simulators.
QisDAX: An Open Source Bridge from Qiskit to Trapped-Ion Quantum Devices
Quantum computing has become widely available to researchers via cloud-hosted devices with different technologies using a multitude of software development frameworks. The vertical stack behind such solutions typically features quantum language abstraction and high-level translation frameworks that tend to be open source, down to pulse-level programming. However, the lower-level mapping to the control electronics, such as controls for laser and microwave pulse generators, remains closed source for contemporary commercial cloud-hosted quantum devices. One exception is the ARTIQ (Advanced Real-Time Infrastructure for Quantum physics) open-source library for trapped-ion control electronics. This stack has been complemented by the Duke ARTIQ Extensions (DAX) to provide modularity and better abstraction. It, however, remains disconnected from the wealth of features provided by popular quantum computing languages. This paper contributes QisDAX, a bridge between Qiskit and DAX that fills this gap. QisDAX provides interfaces for Python programs written using IBM's Qiskit and transpiles them to the DAX abstraction. This allows users to generically interface to the ARTIQ control systems accessing trapped-ion quantum devices. Consequently, the algorithms expressed in Qiskit become available to an open-source quantum software stack. This provides the first open-source, end-to-end, full-stack pipeline for remote submission of quantum programs for trapped-ion quantum systems in a non-commercial setting.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10505935
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-3503-4323-6
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 825 to 836
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Bellevue, WA, USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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