Treffer: Modeling Quantum Teleportation with Quantum Tools in Python (QuTiP)

The unique properties, notations, and conventions of quantum mechanics can make it challenging to properly simulate using traditional software packages. For this reason, several specialized software packages designed for this purpose have recently been released. In this technical report we evaluate one in particular, the Quantum Tools in Python (QuTiP) package, to determine its suitability for use in the simulation of quantum networking protocols. We approach this problem by using QuTiP to implement quantum teleportation, a basic quantum networking operation. We found that QuTiP is technically sound in that it is able to reproduce several published findings, and that it saves significant program design time due to its large library of preprogrammed functions. The only inconvenience we found was that it is only capable of numerical simulation. For these reasons we conclude that QuTiP is a powerful and useful tool for quick tests, and potentially even large numerical simulations.