Quipper

TLDR

The field of quantum algorithms is vibrant, yet practical‑scale programming languages for quantum computation are currently lacking. The authors introduce Quipper, a scalable, expressive, functional, higher‑order quantum programming language, to address this gap. Quipper is a scalable, expressive, functional, higher‑order language that controls a quantum device via a classical computer and is independent of any specific quantum hardware model. Quipper has been used to program diverse non‑trivial quantum algorithms, generating trillions of gates, and is proven effective and easy to use, opening the door to formal analysis of quantum algorithms.

Abstract

The field of quantum algorithms is vibrant. Still, there is currently a lack of programming languages for describing quantum computation on a practical scale, i.e., not just at the level of toy problems. We address this issue by introducing Quipper, a scalable, expressive, functional, higher-order quantum programming language. Quipper has been used to program a diverse set of non-trivial quantum algorithms, and can generate quantum gate representations using trillions of gates. It is geared towards a model of computation that uses a classical computer to control a quantum device, but is not dependent on any particular model of quantum hardware. Quipper has proven effective and easy to use, and opens the door towards using formal methods to analyze quantum algorithms.