Using the Quipper tools

The quipper-tools package contains a number of stand-alone Quipper programs, most of which read a circuit in the Quipper ASCII format on standard input. These tools are intended as examples; they illustrate how other such tools can be written. Each tool also has a --help option to display usage information.

Graphical viewing of circuits:

• quipper-eps: convert a circuit from ASCII to EPS format.

• quipper-pdf: convert a circuit from ASCII to PDF format.

• quipper-preview: read a circuit and launch the previewer.

Decomposing circuits into different gate sets:

• quipper-approximate: decompose rotation and phase gates into the Clifford+T base, using the approximate synthesis algorithm of http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2975.

• quipper-binary: decompose a circuit into binary gates.

• quipper-cliffordt: decompose a circuit into the Clifford+T base, using both exact and approximate synthesis.

• quipper-exact: decompose all gates that permit exact Clifford+T representations into the following gates: controlled-not (with positive or negative control), and single-qubit Clifford gate, T, and T⁻¹. Classical controls and classical gates are not subject to the gate base, and are left untouched.

• quipper-standard: decompose a circuit into the "standard" gates {X, Y, Z, H, S, S⁻¹, T, T⁻¹, CNOT}, using exact and approximate synthesis.

• quipper-strict: decompose a circuit into the gates {H, S, T, CNOT}, using exact and approximate synthesis.

• quipper-trimcontrols: trim excess controls from gates, so that the gates {NOT, X, Y, Z, iX} have at most two controls, phase gates have no controls, and all other gates have at most one control.

• quipper-unbox: unwind a circuit by inlining all top-level boxed subroutines. This can substantially increase the size of the circuit representation.

Resource analysis:

• quipper-depth: read a circuit and output its depth.

• quipper-gatecount: read a circuit and output gate counts.

Simulation:

• quipper-simulate: read a circuit and simulate it by applying it to every posssible basis vector. This is not efficient and only works for very small circuits. Any measurements in the circuit will be simulated probabilistically.

Miscellaneous:

• quipper-ascii: the identity function on circuits: read a circuit on standard output and then output the same circuit to standard output. Illustrates how to parse and output the Quipper ASCII circuit format.

• quipper-qclparser: read an execution trace produced by Ömer's QCL, and turn it into a Quipper circuit.