QCMPI: A parallel environment for quantum computing

Article history: QCMPI is a quantum computer (QC) simulation package written in Fortran 90 with parallel processing capabilities. It is an accessible research tool that permits rapid evaluation of quantum algorithms for a large number of qubits and for various "noise" scenarios. The prime motivation for developing QCMPI is to facilitate numerical examination of not only how QC algorithms work, but also to include noise, decoherence, and attenuation effects and to evaluate the efficacy of error correction schemes. The present work builds on an earlier Mathematica code QDENSITY, which is mainly a pedagogic tool. In that earlier work, although the density matrix formulation was featured, the description using state vectors was also provided. In QCMPI, the stress is on state vectors, in order to employ a large number of qubits. The parallel processing feature is implemented by using the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) protocol. A description of how to spread the wave function components over many processors is provided, along with how to efficiently describe the action of general one- and two-qubit operators on these state vectors. These operators include the standard Pauli, Hadamard, CNOT and CPHASE gates and also Quantum Fourier transformation. These operators make up the actions needed in QC. Codes for Grover's search and Shor's factoring algorithms are provided as examples. A major feature of this work is that concurrent versions of the algorithms can be evaluated with each version subject to alternate noise effects, which corresponds to the idea of solving a stochastic Schrodinger equation. The density matrix for the ensemble of such noise cases is constructed using parallel distribution methods to evaluate its eigenvalues and associated entropy. Potential applications of this powerful tool include studies of the stability and correction of QC processes using Hamiltonian based dynamics.