Users guide

Setting up the provider

To begin, the AQTProvider must be instantiated with an AQT access token:

from qiskit_aqt_provider import AQTProvider

aqt = AQTProvider('MY_TOKEN')

Once loaded with your credentials, the provider gives access to the available AQT backend. These backends can be listed using

print(aqt.backends())

[<AQTSimulator('aqt_qasm_simulator')>, <AQTSimulatorNoise1('aqt_qasm_simulator_noise_1')>, <AQTDevice('aqt_innsbruck')>]

and selected using autocomplete

backend = aqt.backends.aqt_qasm_simulator

One can also query a specific backend by name:

backend = aqt.get_backend('aqt_qasm_simulator')

Compiling circuits for AQT backends

Although one may right a quantum circuit using any selection of quantum gates, the AQT backends can only run a subset of these operations. The gates a given backend supports can be found from the configuration information:

backend.configuration().basis_gates

['rx', 'ry', 'rxx']

Unless written in terms of this basis set, a circuit destined for a AQT backend must first be transpiled into the required gates. For example:

qc = QuantumCircuit(5, 4)
qc.x(4)
qc.h(range(5))
qc.barrier()
qc.cx([0,1,3], [4,4,4])
qc.barrier()
qc.h(range(4))
qc.measure(range(4), range(4))
qc.draw('mpl')

can be decomposed into the target gate set via:

trans_qc = transpile(qc, backend)
trans_qc.draw('mpl')

Executing circuits

A circuit can be passed to the backend using the run() method to retrieve a job:

job = backend.run(trans_qc)

A circuit can also be sent to a backend using the Qiskit execute function:

job = execute(trans_qc, backend)