Quantum Networking in SeQUeNCe: Customizable, Scalable, Easy Debugging

SeQUeNCe: Simulator of QUantum Network Communication

SeQUeNCe is an open source, discrete-event simulator for quantum networks. As described in our paper, the simulator includes 5 modules on top of a simulation kernel:

• Hardware
• Entanglement Management
• Resource Management
• Network Management
• Application

These modules can be edited by users to define additional functionality and test protocol schemes, or may be used as-is to test network parameters and topologies.

Installing

SeQUeNCe requires Python 3.10 or later. You can simply install SeQUeNCe using pip:

pip install sequence

If you wish to make your own edits to the codebase, SeQUeNCe should be installed in development mode (a.k.a. editable install). To do so, clone and install the simulator as follows:

git clone https://github.com/sequence-toolbox/SeQUeNCe.git
cd SeQUeNCe
make install_editable

If you do not have make command (i.e., Windows user), replace make install_editable with pip install --editable . --config-settings editable_mode=strict.

Citation

Please cite us, thank you!

@article{sequence,
author = {Xiaoliang Wu and Alexander Kolar and Joaquin Chung and Dong Jin and Tian Zhong and Rajkumar Kettimuthu and Martin Suchara},
title = {SeQUeNCe: a customizable discrete-event simulator of quantum networks},
journal = {Quantum Science and Technology},
volume = {6},
year = {2021},
month = {sep},
doi = {10.1088/2058-9565/ac22f6},
url = {https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/2058-9565/ac22f6},
publisher = {IOP Publishing},
}

Running the GUI

Once SeQUeNCe has been installed as described above, simply run the gui.py script found in the root of the project directory

python gui.py

Usage Examples

Many examples of SeQUeNCe in action can be found in the example folder. These include both quantum key distribution and entanglement distribution examples.

Starlight Experiments

Code for the experiments performed in our paper can be found in the file starlight_experiments.py. This script uses the starlight.json file (also within the example folder) to specify the network topology.

Jupyter Notebook Examples

The example folder contains several scripts that can be run with jupyter notebook for easy editing and visualization. These files require that the notebook package be installed (Anaconda recommended):

pip install notebook
pip install ipywidgets

To run each file, simply run

jupyter notebook <filename>

These examples include:

• BB84_eg.ipynb, which uses the BB84 protocol to distribute secure keys between two quantum nodes
• two_node_eg.ipynb, which performs entanglement generation between two adjacent quantum routers
• three_node_eg_ep_es.ipynb, which performs entanglement generation, purification, and swapping for a linear network of three quantum routers

Additional Tools

Network Visualization

The example directory contains an example json file starlight.json to specify a network topology, and the utils directory contains the script draw_topo.py to visualize json files. To use this script, the Graphviz library must be installed. Installation information can be found on the Graphviz website.

To view a network, simply run the script and specify the relative location of your json file:

python utils/draw_topo.py example/starlight.json

This script also supports a flag -m to visualize BSM nodes created by default on quantum links between routers.

Libraries Used

This project includes a modified fork of the Quantum++ library version 2.6. Please see the Quantum++ LICENSE file for more information.

Contact

If you have questions, please contact Caitao Zhan at czhan@anl.gov.

Papers that Used and/or Extended SeQUeNCe

• X. Wu et al., "Simulations of Photonic Quantum Networks for Performance Analysis and Experiment Design", IEEE/ACM Workshop on Photonics-Optics Technology Oriented Networking, Information and Computing Systems (PHOTONICS), 2019

• X. Wu, A. Kolar, J. Chung, D. Jin, T. Zhong, R. Kettimuthu and M. Suchara. "SeQUeNCe: A Customizable Discrete-Event Simulator of Quantum Networks", Quantum Science and Technology, 2021

• V. Semenenko et al., "Entanglement generation in a quantum network with finite quantum memory lifetime", AVS Quantum Science, 2022

• A. Zang et al., "Simulation of Entanglement Generation between Absorptive Quantum Memories", IEEE QCE 2022

• M.G. Davis et al., "Towards Distributed Quantum Computing by Qubit and Gate Graph Partitioning Techniques", IEEE QCE 2023

• R. Zhou et al., "A Simulator of Atom-Atom Entanglement with Atomic Ensembles and Quantum Optics", IEEE QCE 2023

• X. Wu et al., "Parallel Simulation of Quantum Networks with Distributed Quantum State Management", ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, 2024

• C. Howe, M. Aziz, and A. Anwar, "Towards Scalable Quantum Repeater Networks", arXiv preprint, 2024

• A. Zang et al., "Quantum Advantage in Distributed Sensing with Noisy Quantum Networks", arXiv preprint, 2024

Please do a Pull Request to add your paper here!