Programs and Gates¶

Note

If you’re running locally, remember set up the QVM and quilc in server mode before trying to use them: Setting Up Server Mode for PyQuil.

Introduction¶

Quantum programs are written in Forest using the Program object. This Program abstraction will help us compose Quil programs.

from pyquil import Program


Programs are constructed by adding quantum gates to it, which are defined in the gates module. We can import all standard gates with the following:

from pyquil.gates import *


Let’s instantiate a Program and add an operation to it. We will act an X gate on qubit 0.

p = Program()
p += X(0)


All qubits begin in the ground state. This means that if we measure a qubit without applying operations on it, we expect to receive a 0 result. The X gate will rotate qubit 0 from the ground state to the excited state, so a measurement immediately after should return a 1 result. More details about gate operations are explained in Introduction to Quantum Computing.

We can print our pyQuil program (print(p)) to see the equivalent Quil representation:

X 0


This isn’t going to be very useful to us without measurements. In pyQuil 2.0, we have to DECLARE a memory space to read measurement results, which we call “readout results” and abbreviate as ro. With measurement, our whole program looks like this:

from pyquil import Program
from pyquil.gates import *

p = Program()
ro = p.declare('ro', 'BIT', 1)
p += X(0)
p += MEASURE(0, ro[0])

print(p)

DECLARE ro BIT[1]
X 0
MEASURE 0 ro[0]


We’ve instantiated a program, declared a memory space named ro with one single bit of memory, applied an X gate on qubit 0, and finally measured qubit 0 into the zeroth index of the memory space named ro.

Awesome! That’s all we need to get results back. Now we can actually see what happens if we run this program on the Quantum Virtual Machine (QVM). We just have to add a few lines to do this.

from pyquil import get_qc

...

qc = get_qc('1q-qvm')  # You can make any 'nq-qvm' this way for any reasonable 'n'
compiled_program = qc.compile(p)
result = qc.run(compiled_program)
print(result)


Congratulations! You just ran your program on the QVM. The returned value should be:

[[1]]


For more information on what the above result means, and on executing quantum programs on the QVM in general, see The Quantum Virtual Machine (QVM). The remainder of this section of the docs will be dedicated to constructing programs in detail, an essential part of becoming fluent in quantum programming.

The Standard Gate Set¶

The following gates methods come standard with Quil and gates.py:

• Pauli gates I, X, Y, Z
• Hadamard gate: H
• Phase gates: PHASE(theta), S, T
• Controlled phase gates: CZ, CPHASE00(alpha), CPHASE01(alpha), CPHASE10(alpha), CPHASE(alpha)
• Cartesian rotation gates: RX(theta), RY(theta), RZ(theta)
• Controlled $$X$$ gates: CNOT, CCNOT
• Swap gates: SWAP, CSWAP, ISWAP, PSWAP(alpha)

The parameterized gates take a real or complex floating point number as an argument.

Coming soon

Coming soon

Coming soon

Coming soon

Defining New Gates¶

New gates can be easily added inline to Quil programs. All you need is a matrix representation of the gate. For example, below we define a $$\sqrt{X}$$ gate.

import numpy as np

from pyquil import Program
from pyquil.quil import DefGate

# First we define the new gate from a matrix
sqrt_x = np.array([[ 0.5+0.5j,  0.5-0.5j],
[ 0.5-0.5j,  0.5+0.5j]])

# Get the Quil definition for the new gate
sqrt_x_definition = DefGate("SQRT-X", sqrt_x)
# Get the gate constructor
SQRT_X = sqrt_x_definition.get_constructor()

# Then we can use the new gate
p = Program()
p += sqrt_x_definition
p += SQRT_X(0)
print(p)

DEFGATE SQRT-X:
0.5+0.5i, 0.5-0.5i
0.5-0.5i, 0.5+0.5i

SQRT-X 0


Below we show how we can define $$X_0\otimes \sqrt{X_1}$$ as a single gate.

# A multi-qubit defgate example
x_gate_matrix = np.array(([0.0, 1.0], [1.0, 0.0]))
sqrt_x = np.array([[ 0.5+0.5j,  0.5-0.5j],
[ 0.5-0.5j,  0.5+0.5j]])
x_sqrt_x = np.kron(x_gate_matrix, sqrt_x)


Now we can use this gate in the same way that we used SQRT_X, but we will pass it two arguments rather than one, since it operates on two qubits.

x_sqrt_x_definition = DefGate("X-SQRT-X", x_sqrt_x)
X_SQRT_X = x_sqrt_x_definition.get_constructor()

# Then we can use the new gate
p = Program(x_sqrt_x_definition, X_SQRT_X(0, 1))


Tip

To inspect the wavefunction that will result from applying your new gate, you can use the Wavefunction Simulator (e.g. print(WavefunctionSimulator().wavefunction(p))).

Defining Parametric Gates¶

Let’s say we want to have a controlled RX gate. Since RX is a parametric gate, we need a slightly different way of defining it than in the previous section.

from pyquil import Program, WavefunctionSimulator
from pyquil.parameters import Parameter, quil_sin, quil_cos
from pyquil.quilbase import DefGate
import numpy as np

# Define the new gate from a matrix
theta = Parameter('theta')
crx = np.array([
[1, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 1, 0, 0],
[0, 0, quil_cos(theta / 2), -1j * quil_sin(theta / 2)],
[0, 0, -1j * quil_sin(theta / 2), quil_cos(theta / 2)]
])

gate_definition = DefGate('CRX', crx, [theta])
CRX = gate_definition.get_constructor()

# Create our program and use the new parametric gate
p = Program()
p += gate_definition
p += H(0)
p += CRX(np.pi/2)(0, 1)


quil_sin and quil_cos work as the regular sines and cosines, but they support the parametrization. Parametrized functions you can use with pyQuil are: quil_sin, quil_cos, quil_sqrt, quil_exp, and quil_cis.

Tip

To inspect the wavefunction that will result from applying your new gate, you can use the Wavefunction Simulator (e.g. print(WavefunctionSimulator().wavefunction(p))).

Pragmas¶

Specifying A Qubit Rewiring Scheme¶

Coming soon

Coming soon (Note: time limit)

Ways to Construct Programs¶

PyQuil supports a variety of methods for constructing programs however you prefer. Multiple instructions can be applied at once, and programs can be added together. PyQuil can also produce a Program by interpreting raw Quil text. You can still use the more pyQuil 1.X style of using the .inst method to add instruction gates. Thus, the following are all valid programs:

# Preferred method
p = Program()
p += X(0)
p += Y(1)
print(p)

# Multiple instructions in declaration
print(Program(X(0), Y(1)))

# A composition of two programs
print(Program(X(0)) + Program(Y(1)))

# Raw Quil with newlines
print(Program("X 0\nY 1"))

# Raw Quil comma separated
print(Program("X 0", "Y 1"))

# Chained inst; less preferred
print(Program().inst(X(0)).inst(Y(1)))


All of the above methods will produce the same output:

X 0
Y 1


The pyquil.parser submodule provides a front-end to other similar parser functionality.

Fixing a Mistaken Instruction¶

If an instruction was appended to a program incorrectly, you can pop it off.

p = Program(X(0), Y(1))
print(p)

print("We can fix by popping:")
p.pop()
print(p)

X 0
Y 1

We can fix by popping:
X 0


QPU-allowable Quil¶

Apart from DECLARE and PRAGMA directives, a program must break into the following three regions, each optional:

1. A RESET command.
2. A sequence of quantum gate applications.
3. A sequence of MEASURE commands.

The only memory that is writeable is the region named ro, and only through MEASURE instructions. All other memory is read-only.

The keyword SHARING is disallowed.

Compilation is unavailable for invocations of DEFGATEs with parameters read from classical memory.