libquantum
the C library for quantum computing and quantum simulation
 
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Simulation of quantum mechanics

Welcome

The latest news from libquantum:
2008-04-27Article on libquantum
2007-09-03Release of libquantum 0.9.1
2005-11-21Debian packages available

libquantum is a C library for the simulation of quantum mechanics, with a special focus laid to quantum computing. It started as a pure quantum computer simulator, but support for general quantum simulation has been recently added.

Quantum computing

Based on the principles of quantum mechanics, libquantum provides an implementation of a quantum register. Basic operations for register manipulation such as the Hadamard gate or the Controlled-NOT gate are available through an easy-to-use interface. Measurements can be performed on either single qubits or the whole quantum register.

General quantum simulation

Besides quantum computing, libquantum is able to compute the time-evolution of arbitrary Hamiltonians, including time-dependent ones. This is done via numerical integration of the Schrödinger equation. Computing the time-evolution for time-independent Hamiltonians via exact diagonalization is currently under development.

Features

  • Simulation of arbitrary quantum algorithms is possible
  • High performance and low memory consumption
  • Optional time-evolution using fourth-order Runge-Kutta, including optimizations for sparse Hamiltonians
  • Decoherence support for realistic quantum computation
  • Interface for quantum error correction (QEC)
  • Supports the density operator formalism
  • Implementations of Shor's factoring algorithm and Grover's search algorithm are included
  • libquantum is available as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3. See the file COPYING for further details.

Requirements

libquantum requires a C compiler with complex number support. The simulator has been reported to work on the following platforms:

  • GNU/Linux (This is the main development platform)
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • HP Tru64 UNIX
  • AIX

Awards

  • Official SPEC CPU2006 benchmark
  • Jugend forscht Baden-Württemberg 2003 runner-up

Authors

libquantum has been written by Björn Butscher and Hendrik Weimer. The authors can be contacted at libquantum@libquantum.de.