BGLS: A Python Package for the Gate-by-Gate Sampling Algorithm to Simulate Quantum Circuits

Abstract

The classical simulation of quantum computers is in general a computationally hard problem. To emulate the behavior of realistic devices, it is sufficient to sample bitstrings from circuits. Recently, arXiv:2112.08499 introduced the so-called gate-by-gate sampling algorithm to sample bitstrings and showed it to be computationally favorable in many cases. Here we present bgls, a Python package which implements this sampling algorithm. bgls has native support for several states and is highly flexible for use with additional states. We show how to install and use bgls, discuss optimizations in the algorithm, and demonstrate its utility on several problems.