Simulator device

You can instantiate the device in PennyLane as follows:

import pennylane as qml

dev = qml.device('cirq.simulator', wires=2)

This device can then be used just like other devices for the definition and evaluation of QNodes within PennyLane. A simple quantum function that returns the expectation value of a measurement and depends on three classical input parameters would look like:

@qml.qnode(dev)
def circuit(x, y, z):
    qml.RZ(z, wires=[0])
    qml.RY(y, wires=[0])
    qml.RX(x, wires=[0])
    qml.CNOT(wires=[0, 1])
    return qml.expval(qml.PauliZ(wires=1))

You can then execute the circuit like any other function to get the quantum mechanical expectation value.

circuit(0.2, 0.1, 0.3)

Device options

Cirq has different ways of defining qubits, e.g., LineQubit or GridQubit. The Cirq device therefore accepts an additional argument qubits=None that you can use to define your own qubits and give them to the device as a list.

import cirq

qubits = [
  cirq.GridQubit(0, 0),
  cirq.GridQubit(0, 1),
  cirq.GridQubit(1, 0),
  cirq.GridQubit(1, 1),
]

dev = qml.device("cirq.simulator", wires=4, qubits=qubits)

The wire of each qubit corresponds to its index in the qubit list. In the above example, the wire 2 corresponds to cirq.GridQubit(1, 0).

If no qubits are given, the plugin will create an array of LineQubit instances.

Custom simulators

The simulator device can also be instantiated using an optional custom simulator object:

import pennylane as qml
import cirq

sim = cirq.Simulator()
dev = qml.device("cirq.simulator", wires=2, simulator=sim)

If the simulator argument is not provided, the device will by default create a cirq.Simulator simulator.

Supported operations

The cirq.simulator device supports all PennyLane operations and observables.

devices/simulator

 

Download Python script

 

Download Notebook

 

View on GitHub