Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Computation, and the Density Operator in SymPy
Addison Cugini
Abstract
Because aspects of quantum mechanics are both difficult to understand and difficult algebraically, there is a need for software which symbolically simulates quantum me-chanical phenomena. To accomplish this goal, code has been added to an open-source computer algebra system, called SymPy, which models the abstraction of Dirac nota-tion and the density operator. Additionally, a quantum computer simulation has been built using this abstraction. This paper shall discuss the code that has been added as well as any relevant physics important to understanding the code. In particular, we shall focus on the density operator of statistical quantum mechanics using SymPy's density matrices as a guide. 1