This README file presents a quick overview of Qiskit Aqua, with brief installation, setup and execution instructions. Please refer to the Aqua documentation for a detailed presentation of Aqua and its components and capabilities, as well as step-by-step installation and execution instructions.
Qiskit Algorithms for Quantum Applications (Qiskit Aqua) is a library of algorithms for quantum computing that uses Qiskit Terra to build out, compile and run quantum circuits.
Aqua provides a library of cross-domain algorithms upon which domain-specific applications can be built. At the time of writing, Aqua Chemistry has been created to utilize Aqua for quantum chemistry computations. Aqua is also showcased for other domains with both code and notebook examples, such as Aqua Optimization and Aqua Artificial Intelligence.
Aqua was designed to be extensible, and uses a pluggable framework where algorithms and support objects used by algorithms, such as optimizers, variational forms, and oracles, are derived from a defined base class for the type and discovered dynamically at run time.
If you'd like to contribute to Aqua, please take a look at our contribution guidelines.
Links to Sections:
Aqua is built upon Qiskit Terra. Therefore, you are encouraged to look over the Qiskit Terra installation instructions too.
Just like for Terra, at least Python 3.5 or later is needed to use Aqua. In addition, Jupyter Notebook is recommended for interacting with the tutorials. For this reason we recommend installing the Anaconda 3 Python distribution, as it comes with all of these dependencies pre-installed.
We encourage you to install Aqua via the pip Python package management tool:
pip install qiskit-aqua
pip will handle all dependencies automatically and you will always install the latest (and well-tested) release version.
If, however, your goal is not to use Aqua as a tool, but rather to contribute new components to Aqua, then we recommend cloning this repository. This will give you a more direct access to the code. In any case, we recommend using Python virtual environments to improve your experience.
Now that you have installed Aqua, you can execute an algorithm. This can be done programmatically or using a JSON file as an input. Whether via dictionary or via JSON, the input is validated for correctness against schemas.
JSON is convenient when the algorithm input has been saved in this form from a prior run. A file containing a saved JSON input can be given to either the GUI or the command line tool in order to run the algorithm.
One simple way to generate such JSON input is by serializing the input to Aqua when executing one of the applications running on top of Aqua, such as Aqua Chemistry, Aqua AI or Aqua Optimization. The GUI also saves any entered configuration in JSON.
The documentation contains detailed information on the various parameters for each algorithm along with links to the respective components they use.
The Aqua GUI allows you to load and save a JSON file to run an algorithm, as well as create a new one or edit an existing one. Using the GUI, you can alter the parameters of an algorithm and/or its dependent objects to see how the changes affect the outcome. If you installed Aqua via the pip tool, a script will be present on your system allowing you to start the GUI from the command line, as follows:
qiskit_aqua_ui
If you installed Aqua by cloning this repository directly, instead of using the pip tool, then the GUI can be run from the root folder of the qiskit-aqua repository clone, using the following command:
python qiskit_aqua/ui/run
Configuring an experiment that involves both quantum-computing and domain-specific parameters may look like a challenging activity, which requires specialized knowledge on both the specific domain in which the experiment runs and quantum computing itself. Aqua simplifies the configuration of any run in two ways:
- Defaults are provided for each parameter. Such defaults have been validated to be the best choices in most cases.
- Robust configuration correctness enforcement mechanisms are in place. The input parameters are always schema validated by Aqua when attempting to run an algorithm. When using the GUI to configure an experiment, the GUI itself prevents incompatible parameters from being selected.
The command line tool will run an algorithm from the supplied JSON file. Run without any arguments, it will print help
information. The pip installation creates a script, qiskit_aqua_cmd, which can be invoked with a JSON algorithm input file from the command line, for example as follows:
qiskit_aqua_cmd examples/H2-0.735.json
If you installed Aqua by cloning this repository directly, instead of using the pip tool, then the command line tool can be run from the root folder of the qiskit-aqua repository clone using the following command:
python qiskit_aqua
Since Aqua is extensible with pluggable components, we have provided a documentation GUI that shows all the pluggable components along with the schema for their parameters. The pip installation creates a script to invoke the browser GUI as follows:
qiskit_aqua_browser
If you installed Aqua by cloning this repository directly, instead of using the pip tool, then the documentation GUI can be run from the root folder of the qiskit-aqua repository clone using the following command:
python qiskit_aqua/ui/browser
Any algorithm in Aqua can be run programmatically too. The aqua folder in the
qiskit-tutorial GitHub repository contains numerous
examples that demonstrate how to do this. As you can see, Aqua exposes a run_algorithm method, which takes either
the JSON algorithm input or an equivalent Python dictionary and optional AlgorithmInput object for the algorithm.
There is also a run_algorithm_to_json method that simply takes the input and saves it to JSON in a self-contained form,
which can later be used by the command line or GUI.
Aqua was inspired, authored and brought about by the collective work of a team of researchers.
Aqua continues now to grow with the help and work of many people, who contribute to the project at different levels.