research-article

Quipper: a scalable quantum programming language

Authors:

Alexander S. Green,

Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine,

Peter Selinger,

Benoît ValironAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '13: Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 333 - 342

https://doi.org/10.1145/2491956.2462177

Published: 16 June 2013 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Colledan ADal Lago U(2025)Flexible Type-Based Resource Estimation in Quantum Circuit Description LanguagesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048839:POPL(1386-1416)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704883
Abdulla PChen YChen YHolík LLengál OLin JLo FTsai W(2025)Verifying Quantum Circuits with Level-Synchronized Tree AutomataProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048689:POPL(923-953)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704868
Luo JZhao J(2025)Formalization of Quantum Intermediate Representations for code safetyJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112236219(112236)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112236
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Index Terms

Quipper: a scalable quantum programming language
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
2. Theory of computation
  1. Formal languages and automata theory

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '13: Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2013

546 pages

ISBN:9781450320146

DOI:10.1145/2491956

General Chair:
Hans-J. Boehm
HP Labs
,
Program Chair:
Cormac Flanagan
University of California, Santa Cruz

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 48, Issue 6
PLDI '13
June 2013
515 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2499370
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 16 June 2013

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PLDI '13: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 16 - 19, 2013

Washington, Seattle, USA

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PLDI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 46 of 267 submissions, 17%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 406 of 2,067 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Colledan ADal Lago U(2025)Flexible Type-Based Resource Estimation in Quantum Circuit Description LanguagesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048839:POPL(1386-1416)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704883
Abdulla PChen YChen YHolík LLengál OLin JLo FTsai W(2025)Verifying Quantum Circuits with Level-Synchronized Tree AutomataProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048689:POPL(923-953)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704868
Luo JZhao J(2025)Formalization of Quantum Intermediate Representations for code safetyJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112236219(112236)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112236
Venev HGehr TDimitrov DVechev M(2024)Modular Synthesis of Efficient Quantum UncomputationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897858:OOPSLA2(2097-2124)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689785
Yuan CCarbin M(2024)The T-Complexity Costs of Error Correction for Control Flow in Quantum ComputationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36563978:PLDI(492-517)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656397
Paradis ADekoninck JBichsel BVechev M(2024)Synthetiq: Fast and Versatile Quantum Circuit SynthesisProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498138:OOPSLA1(55-82)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649813
Yuan CVillanyi ACarbin M(2024)Quantum Control Machine: The Limits of Control Flow in Quantum ProgrammingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498118:OOPSLA1(1-28)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649811
Peng YYoung JLiu PWu X(2024)SimuQ: A Framework for Programming Quantum Hamiltonian Simulation with Analog CompilationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329238:POPL(2425-2455)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632923
Metwalli SVan Meter R(2024)Testing and Debugging Quantum CircuitsIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering10.1109/TQE.2024.33748795(1-15)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TQE.2024.3374879
Di Matteo ONúñez-Corrales SStęchły MReinhardt SMattson T(2024)An Abstraction Hierarchy Toward Productive Quantum Programming2024 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE)10.1109/QCE60285.2024.00117(979-989)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/QCE60285.2024.00117
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