qsimulatR package for quantum computing with R

Quantum computing is attracting a lot of attention recently due to significant advances in constructing quantum devices. While this does not yet mean that large scale quantum computing is possible, it might be so in the future. Thus, for the time being, quantum simulators play an important role for inventing and testing of algorithms.

Quantum computing requires a different approach to programming than many of us are used to on classical computers. The more or less standard approach is now via so-called quantum circuits, a generalisation of classical logical circuits (or better classical reversible circuits). The basic entity of such a circuit is a quantum state composed out of qubits. Such states can be manipulated via unitary quantum gates. Classical information can be retrieved by performing (projective) measurements.

For a comprehensive introduction and discussion see Nielsen and Chuang (2016).

The qsimulatR package provides the functionality to simulate quantum computing using R. It may be installed now via install.packages("qsimulatR") from the R console.

qsimulatR is ideally suited to be used for educational purposes. There are several vignettes provided with some standard quantum circuits. qsimulatR provides the ability to export to Qiskit, which then allows one to run the code on existing quantum hardware. Moreover, quantum circuits can be visualised, like for instance