Qiskit Pocket Guide

Preface

Qiskit is an open source SDK (software development kit) for working with quantum computers at the level of pulses, circuits, and application modules. The purpose of this book is to provide a succinct guide for developers to use while creating applications that leverage quantum computers and simulators.

We hope this book will enable developers to actively participate in the open source Qiskit community. The Qiskit community, as well as documentation, tutorials, and other resources, is available at Qiskit.

How This Book Is Structured

Our goal in this guide is to address much of the functionality of Qiskit that application developers will routinely use. Some of this Qiskit functionality is considered to be fundamental to quantum computing. Other Qiskit functionality supports quantum computing concepts such as quantum information and quantum algorithms. Qiskit has additional functionality that we’ve deemed essential for quantum application development. We’ve structured the book at a high level according to the aforementioned functionality, with individual chapters drilling into the specifics. The chapters are divided into three parts:

Part I, Qiskit Fundamentals

In the first part of the book, we show you how to use Qiskit to create quantum circuits. Quantum circuits contain instructions and gates, so we discuss how to use the ones provided in Qiskit, as well as how to create your own. We then show you how to run quantum circuits on quantum computers and simulators and demonstrate ...