How can I initialize a state like, $|00\rangle$ or $|01\rangle$ or $|10\rangle$ or $|11\rangle$ in Qiskit?

Question

Many thanks in advance for your help. I am a beginner in Qiskit. I want to implement a circuit that uses the position of an element/item, of the form (x,y) and I would like to represent it as a state $|\phi\rangle = |xy\rangle$. How can I initialize a state like, $|00\rangle$ or $|01\rangle$ or $|10\rangle$ or $|11\rangle$? Or how could I apply the tensor product to get it?

Answer 1

Here is Qiskit code you wanted:

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit, transpile, Aer, IBMQ, QuantumRegister, ClassicalRegister

q = QuantumRegister(2)
c = ClassicalRegister(2)

#state |00>
circ00 = QuantumCircuit(q,c)
circ00.draw()
#do nothing, both qubits are already in state |0>

#state |01>
circ01 = QuantumCircuit(q,c)
circ01.x(q[1])
circ01.draw()

#state |10>
circ10 = QuantumCircuit(q,c)
circ10.x(q[0])
circ10.draw()

#state |11>
circ11 = QuantumCircuit(q,c)
circ11.x(q[0])
circ11.x(q[1])
circ11.draw()

State you want to prepare are so-called basis states in computational basis. You can easily prepare them with $X$ gate (i.e. equivalent of NOT in classical computation). Initially, qubits are in state $|0\rangle$. If you want to change one of them to state $|1\rangle$, simply put on that qubit the $X$ gate.

Please run the code per partes to see how circuits differ for each of the basis states.

In Qiskit, you can also use function initialize. It uses vector representation of states, which are in your case:

• $|00\rangle = \begin{pmatrix}1 & 0 & 0 & 0\end{pmatrix}^T$
• $|01\rangle = \begin{pmatrix}0 & 1 & 0 & 0\end{pmatrix}^T$
• $|10\rangle = \begin{pmatrix}0 & 0 & 1 & 0\end{pmatrix}^T$
• $|11\rangle = \begin{pmatrix}0 & 0 & 0 & 1\end{pmatrix}^T$

So, the Qiskit code is following

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit, transpile, Aer, IBMQ, QuantumRegister, ClassicalRegister, execute
import numpy as np

import numpy as np

q = QuantumRegister(2)
c = ClassicalRegister(2)
circ = QuantumCircuit(q,c)

#state = np.array([1,0,0,0]) #00
#state = np.array([0,1,0,0]) #01
#state = np.array([0,0,1,0]) #10
state = np.array([0,0,0,1]) #11

circ.initialize(state)
circ.measure(q,c)

processor = Aer.backends(name='qasm_simulator')[0] #simulator
res = execute(circ, processor, shots = 1).result().get_counts(circ)
print(res)

Answer 2

You might want to take a look at the Qiskit's textbook. It go through some introduction materials to quantum computing and while teaching you how to use qiskit along the way. I think it will worth your time.

In any case, to create the state you interested, you can use the following operations:

1. $ (I\otimes I) |00\rangle = |00\rangle$

        ┌───┐
q_0: |0>┤ I ├
        ├───┤
q_1: |0>┤ I ├
        └───┘

2. $(I\otimes X) |00\rangle = |01\rangle$

        ┌───┐
q_0: |0>┤ I ├
        ├───┤
q_1: |0>┤ X ├
        └───┘

3. $(X\otimes I) |00\rangle = |10\rangle$

        ┌───┐
q_0: |0>┤ X ├
        ├───┤
q_1: |0>┤ I ├
        └───┘

4. $(X\otimes X) |00\rangle = |11\rangle $

        ┌───┐
q_0: |0>┤ X ├
        ├───┤
q_1: |0>┤ X ├
        └───┘

Here $I$ is the identity gate (so it equivalent to you doing nothing) and $X$ is the NOT gate.