Libquantum – Simulation of quantum mechanics

http://www.libquantum.de/

by jonbaer • 12 years ago

40 11 12 years ago

gliese1337• 12 years ago

I find this particularly interesting since I had to implement a quantum simulator using Runge-Kutta numerical integration of the Schrodinger equation in school, for a computational physics class. It was fun to play with (great for making screensavers of waveforms), but I never got so far as learning how to implement quantum computing operations.

There are several programming languages being developed for programming quantum computers (such as QCL[1]), but not a whole lot of awareness of them as far as I know. It'd be really neat to see an open-source QC simulator like this become the basis of a common Quantum Virtual Machine to make quantum programming more accessible to the Interested Hacker.

[1] http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~oemer/qcl.html

lisper3• 12 years ago

So... what would actually happen if I used libquantum to run Shor's algorithm?

trurl42• 12 years ago

You would find prime factors.

What else would you expect to happen?

lisper3• 12 years ago

Let me be a little more specific: how would the performance of finding prime factors using Shor's algorithm running on libquantum compare to classical factoring algorithms? I know it would be less efficient, but by how much? How many digits could I reasonably expect to factor in non-geologic time this way? How big a task would it be to code? Is this a reasonable experiment to try to do?

NamTaf• 12 years ago

To expand on the sibling post, you obviously won't find it in faster-than-current factorisation processes because this isn't acutally doing quantum algorithms, but rather emulating them.

What it's useful for is understanding the processes. I found quantum algorithms tough to get my head around at times so this could be a valuable learning tool.

jonbaer• 12 years ago

http://qcplayground.withgoogle.com/#/playground/568171774659...

lisper3• 12 years ago

Thanks!!!

colanderman2• 12 years ago

Shameless plug; a while ago I wrote a very similar library [1] using CUDA. Unlike this library, it does not allow for a sparse representation of the state vector; but for maximally entangled states it's pretty efficient (as fast as memory allows). I've tested it up to 28 qubits. But fair warning; it's very much undocumented and a toy.

[1] http://hub.darcs.net/squirrel/quantum

quarterwave• 12 years ago

“Can you give me a simple, concrete explanation of how quantum computers work?” http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/quantum-computing-for-everyon...

Libquantum – Simulation of quantum mechanics

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