Introduction to Cirq

Cirq is an open-source quantum computing framework developed by Google. It is designed for creating, editing, and invoking quantum circuits on quantum computers and simulators. Cirq allows users to develop quantum algorithms and run them on real quantum hardware.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7 or later
• pip (Python package installer)

Installation Steps

1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
2. Run the following command to install Cirq:

pip install cirq

3. Verify the installation by importing Cirq in Python:

import cirq

Key Components

• Qubit: The basic unit of quantum information.
• Circuit: A collection of quantum gates applied to qubits.
• Gate: An operation that changes the state of the qubits.
• Simulator: A software tool to mimic quantum computation.

Creating a Simple Quantum Circuit

Here’s how to create a simple quantum circuit that applies a Hadamard gate to a qubit:

import cirq

# Create a qubit
qubit = cirq.NamedQubit("q")

# Create a circuit
circuit = cirq.Circuit()

# Apply a Hadamard gate
circuit.append(cirq.H(qubit))

# Measure the qubit
circuit.append(cirq.measure(qubit, key='result'))

# Print the circuit
print(circuit)

This code initializes a qubit, applies a Hadamard gate, and measures the qubit's state.