QisDAX: An Open Source Bridge from Qiskit to Trapped-Ion Quantum Devices
Quantum computing has become widely available to researchers via cloud-hosted devices with different technologies using a multitude of software development frameworks. The vertical stack behind such solutions typically features quantum language abstraction and high-level translation frameworks that tend to be open source, down to pulse-level programming. However, the lower-level mapping to the control electronics, such as controls for laser and microwave pulse generators, remains closed source for contemporary commercial cloud-hosted quantum devices. One exception is the ARTIQ (Advanced Real-Time Infrastructure for Quantum physics) open-source library for trapped-ion control electronics. This stack has been complemented by the Duke ARTIQ Extensions (DAX) to provide modularity and better abstraction. It, however, remains disconnected from the wealth of features provided by popular quantum computing languages. This paper contributes QisDAX, a bridge between Qiskit and DAX that fills this gap. QisDAX provides interfaces for Python programs written using IBM's Qiskit and transpiles them to the DAX abstraction. This allows users to generically interface to the ARTIQ control systems accessing trapped-ion quantum devices. Consequently, the algorithms expressed in Qiskit become available to an open-source quantum software stack. This provides the first open-source, end-to-end, full-stack pipeline for remote submission of quantum programs for trapped-ion quantum systems in a non-commercial setting.
