Welcome to Noptics the Nim linear algebra and optics library!

Motivation

Noptics is closely related to QGot, a C++ quantum Gaussian optics library hosted here. It is used to simulate quantum optics, mostly using the continuous variable formalism. It is maintained by Duality Quantum Optics.

After having used C++ for a while the long, compile times, notably for heavy templated code, has become extremely annoying. Nim offers a similar performance to native C++ (within an order of magnitude, I hope) and it is much easier to get an idea coded up.

Noptics

Is a library that sits on top of the Nim standard libraries and with no other dependencies. It aims to compile quickly and be reasonably performant! The code is hosted on gitlab here.

Library features

The library is composed of a few parts:

  1. A pure Nim linear algebra library
  2. Optics simulation
  3. Quantum optics simulation
  4. Graphs (vertices and edges kind)
  5. Plotting support using Gnuplot
  6. Signal processing/analysis

Install

Clone the repo and run nimble install

git clone https://gitlab.com/OFThomas/noptics.git
cd noptics
nimble install

You're ready to go, make sure to checkout the examples in /examples.

Requirements

You need to have gnuplot installed to use plotting.nim or signals.nim. On Ubuntu/debian

sudo apt-get install gnuplot-x11

To run

For a program called prog, 

nim c -d:danger prog

Overview

  • We use our own linear algebra library linalg to increase support for complex numbers, with no dependencies on other libraries. There is also a file of useful functions for combinatorics.
  • The classical optics library optics, which describes state transformations with different optical elements.
  • The quantum optics library quantumoptics, with support for Gaussian and Fock states, and boson sampling. Provides the following types: click pattern objects (photon number resolving and threshold detectors), quantum states (Fock and Gaussian).
  • Quantum information processing in the qubit picture, qubits.
  • The graph library, graphs, for the mathematical structure comprising vertices and edges.
  • Plotting using Gnuplot, and a signal processing library, mainly for modulator impulse responses, signals.

General notes on Nim

For maximum performance use -d:danger to compile with the highest optimization.

Using -d:lto can speed programs up by a factor of 2.

Actually for quantum.nim and threshold detector click probabilities, including or using -d:lto for the std/complex Nim system module improves performace by a factor of 12!