QubitPlaceholder
s¶In PyQuil, we typically use integers to identify qubits
from pyquil import Program
from pyquil.gates import CNOT, H
print(Program(H(0), CNOT(0, 1)))
H 0 CNOT 0 1
However, when running on real, near-term QPUs we care about what particular physical qubits our program will run on. In fact, we may want to run the same program on an assortment of different qubits. This is where using QubitPlaceholder
s comes in.
from pyquil.quilatom import QubitPlaceholder
q0 = QubitPlaceholder()
q1 = QubitPlaceholder()
prog = Program(H(q0), CNOT(q0, q1))
print(prog)
H {q5186245072} CNOT {q5186245072} {q5186245128}
If you try to use this program directly, it will not work
try:
print(prog.out())
except RuntimeError as e:
print(e)
Qubit q5186245072 has not been assigned an index
Instead, you must explicitly map the placeholders to physical qubits. By default, the function address_qubits
will address qubits from 0 to N.
from pyquil.quil import address_qubits
print(address_qubits(prog))
H 0 CNOT 0 1
The real power comes into play when you provide an explicit mapping
print(address_qubits(prog, qubit_mapping={
q0: 14,
q1: 19,
}))
H 14 CNOT 14 19
Usually, your algorithm will use an assortment of qubits. You can use the convenience function QubitPlaceholder.register()
to request a list of qubits to build your program.
qbyte = QubitPlaceholder.register(8)
prog2 = Program(H(q) for q in qbyte)
print(address_qubits(prog2, {q: i*2 for i, q in enumerate(qbyte)}))
H 0 H 2 H 4 H 6 H 8 H 10 H 12 H 14