qinf is a quantum information package for the Maxima computer algebra system. The motivation for this package is for reproducible research. An example verifying calculations in a paper is included: doc/qinf.pdf.
qinf implements objects used in quantum information theory--- operators, vectors, tensors, etc. These objects are typically represented in this package as row and column vectors and matrices, whose entries may be explicit numbers or algebraic expressions. This software occupies a niche distinct from high performance numerical linear algebra software as well as software such as the Maxima tensor packages that manipulate abstract mathematical objects.
To use this package, copy all of the files in the ./src/ directory to your
.maxima/ directory, or other directory in Maxima's search path. For
unix/linux, there is a script ./install.sh that does this for you.
At the Maxima prompt give the following command.
load("qinf.mac");
Under unix/linx/mac os, runtests.sh runs the tests.
This file just runs the command maxima -b runtests.mac.
In turn, runtests.mac first sets Maxima's search paths so that
files in ./src/ and ./test/ are found, and then runs
some tests.
Documentation is here: doc/qinf.pdf.
See the code in ./examples/. The code used in the user's guide, doc/qinf.pdf, is in ./code_for_user_guide/.
Contributed code is found in ./contributed/.
In working on this project, it became clear that translating existing symbolic quantum information libraries could be productive. Then, I began to write Mathematica compatibility functions in Maxima to make this translation easier. This lead to the Mixima project which includes many such compatibility functions and a transcoder from Mathematica to Maxima. Included in the Mixima repo is a translation of Robert Griffiths' Quantum Information Programs in Mathematica.
While Mixima is useful, it has limitations arising from the different designs of Mathematica and Maxima. I addressed these, and other needs for Maxima in the project mext. With the arrival of the Julia language, it became feasible to write a CAS from scratch. So, I then started the Symata project in Julia. Symata is a symbolic language similar to Maxima, Maple, and Mathematica.