In the past few years, Quantum Computing has become a hot topic in the technology sector. The ability to perform operations on quantum bits, or qubits, enables quantum computers to solve certain types of problems exponentially faster than classical computers, making them an interesting subject for study.
We will take a first step into the world of Quantum Computing using Python and a library known as Qiskit.
Quantum computing leverages the quantum phenomenon like superposition and entanglement to create states that are not achievable with purely classical systems.
Qiskit is an open-source quantum computing framework specifically designed for use with IBM's quantum computers, but it can also be used for simulations on your local machine.
First, we need to install Qiskit. It can easily be installed with pip:
pip install qiskit
In Quantum computing, we use the concept of Quantum Circuits. They are a sequence of gates, and measurements arranged in a particular order. Let's create a 2 qubit quantum circuit.
from qiskit import QuantumCircuit qc = QuantumCircuit(2) # Initializing a Quantum Circuit with 2 qubits
We can visualize our quantum circuit using the draw method.
print(qc.draw())
Quantum gates are used to manipulate qubits. The common quantum gates include the NOT gate (Pauli-X gate), the Hadamard gate (H gate), the T gate, and more.
qc.h(0) # Apply Hadamard gate to qubit 0 qc.cx(0, 1) # Apply Controlled-X (CNOT) gate on 0th qubit with 1st as target
It's time for us to measure the qubits. When we perform the measurement, the qubit is forced to 'choose' one of its possible values. Let's add the measurements to our circuit.
# measuring the qubits and storing the result in classical bits qc.measure_all()
Finally, we can visualize the finalized quantum circuit using:
print(qc.draw())
Remember, quantum computing is a rapidly evolving field, and understanding how it works is an ongoing journey. Python with Qiskit provides an accessible platform for learning and experimenting with quantum computing concepts.