We just rolled out a huge collection (20+) of brand new Jupyter notebooks on our Quantum Information Software Developer Kit (Qiskit). Whether you’re a quantum research scientist trying to study the fundamentals of quantum states, a developer who wants to understand how you’d actually solve problems in chemistry or optimization, or someone curious how to build quantum games, you’re gonna love what we just put out. You are hereby invited to add to the already 1 million-plus experiments run on the system.

Quantum research scientists: We’ve updated Qiskit with important new functionality for studying tomography and decoherence — experiments that let you study the state of the quantum system. We also built new tools to help you visualize quantum states. Plus, a brand new compiler to map the experiments you actually want to run onto the hardware we have.

Quantum developers, we’ve told you in the past we think chemistry and optimization will be some of the earliest use cases for quantum. Want to see how to actually run chemistry and optimization experiments? We just published a Jupyter notebook that shows you how to calculate the equilibrium bond lengths in Hydrogen (H2), and Lithium hydride (LiH). Over time, we’ll expand the range of molecules and properties we can simulate.

How about optimization? In the real world, there are so many uses of optimization (think of all the things you want to minimize and maximize!). We just put out a Jupyter notebook that showcases MaxCut problems, defined by finding the minimum (cost of something), and the maximum (the profit of that something), as well as the Traveling Salesman challenge of the “perfect route.”

Quantum applications for the classical world

So how do we envision using these notebooks? Possibly as part of a larger project, that maybe you’re doing with the Data Science Experience (DSX, an interactive, collaborative, cloud-based environment for data scientists). Just in case that’s in the cards for you, we put out a notebook that helps you get started doing quantum experiments through the DSX environment. We also make it easy to invite fellow researchers to collaborate or simply share your work within the community.

Sometimes it is all fun and (quantum) games

These notebooks are just the tip of the iceberg of our recent upgrade to Qiskit. But we’ve also had some great contributions by our friends and community members all over the world. Dr. James Wootton from the University of Basel, for example, posted a how-to guide for writing quantum games like Quantum Battleships. Here’s how he puts it on his blog: “Like normal Battleships, but simpler and more complex at the same time.”

The IBM Q experience takes you into the lab, into the depths of the dilution refrigerator, through the magic of the cloud, and is freely available to anyone curious about programming a quantum computer. To get started, visit our user guide. And then jump to our Jupyter notebooks to start experimenting. You can also watch a video to learn more about quantum computing.