Quirk

Quirk is an open-source software development kit for building, simulating, and executing quantum circuits. It provides an interface similar to Qiskit for creating quantum algorithms, applying quantum gates, simulating statevectors, and measuring qubits.

Note

The current development of Quirk is focused on shifting the circuit representation to a DAG based data structure. Due to dependency differences between the rustworkx crate and the current project, development is being done in the dag branch.

Installation

To install Quirk, begin by cloning the repository to the local directory.

git clone https://github.com/kelliherm/quirk.git
cd quirk

Then install the local dependencies with pip or your preferred Python package manager.

pip install -e .

Getting Started

The following examples walks you through the process of creating and simulating a simple quantum circuit, known as the Bell state.

from quirk import QuantumCircuit, Simulator

# Create a quantum circuit with 2 qubits and 2 classical bits
qc = QuantumCircuit(2, 2)

# Apply Hadamard gate
qc.h(0)

# Apply CNOT gate
qc.cx(0, 1)

# Measure both qubits
qc.measure(0, 0)
qc.measure(1, 1)

# Simulate the circuit
simulator = Simulator()
result = simulator.run(qc, shots=1000)

# View results
print(result)
print(result.get_counts())

Gate Library

Quirk includes a large standard gate library, which consists of various one, two, and three-qubit gates.

One-Qubit Gates

Gate	Method	Description
X	qc.x(qubit)	Pauli-X (NOT) gate
Y	qc.y(qubit)	Pauli-Y gate
Z	qc.z(qubit)	Pauli-Z gate
H	qc.h(qubit)	Hadamard gate
S	qc.s(qubit)	S gate (Phase gate)
S†	qc.sdg(qubit)	S dagger gate
T	qc.t(qubit)	T gate (π/8 gate)
T†	qc.tdg(qubit)	T dagger gate
I	qc.i(qubit)	Identity gate
RX	qc.rx(theta, qubit)	Rotation around X-axis
RY	qc.ry(theta, qubit)	Rotation around Y-axis
RZ	qc.rz(theta, qubit)	Rotation around Z-axis
U3	qc.u3(theta, phi, lambda, qubit)	Generic single-qubit rotation

Two-Qubit Gates

Gate	Method	Description
CNOT/CX	qc.cx(control, target)	Controlled-NOT gate
CY	qc.cy(control, target)	Controlled-Y gate
CZ	qc.cz(control, target)	Controlled-Z gate
SWAP	qc.swap(qubit1, qubit2)	SWAP gate

Three-Qubit Gates

Gate	Method	Description
Toffoli/CCX	qc.ccx(ctrl1, ctrl2, target)	Toffoli gate (CCNOT)
Fredkin/CSWAP	qc.cswap(ctrl, target1, target2)	Fredkin gate (Controlled-SWAP)

Project Structure

quirk/
├── quirk/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── circuit/
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── gate.py           # Gate implementations
│   │   ├── instruction.py    # Instruction class
│   │   ├── quantumcircuit.py # Circuit builder
│   │   └── register.py       # Register classes
│   └── simulation/
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── simulator.py      # Circuit simulator
│   │   └── statevector.py    # Statevector class
│   └── utils/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── helpers.py        # Helper functions
├── README.md
└── pyproject.toml

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License. More details can be found in the license file.

Acknowledgments

Quirk is inspired by IBM's Qiskit and aims to provide an educational and accessible quantum computing framework.