Simulations#

Simulations in QC Lab are carried out by instances of the qclab.Simulation class. These simulation objects contain the model and algorithm objects that define the system to be simulated and the method of simulation, respectively. The simulation object also contains an instance of the qclab.Constants class (sim.settings) which defines the settings of the simulation, such as the time step, total simulation time, and number of trajectories to be simulated. The simulation object also contains a variable object (sim.initial_state) in which the initial state of the system is defined (these are typically algorithm specific).

Simulation Objects#

A simulation object, generically denoted sim, is an instance of the qclab.Simulation class. It contains the following attributes:

  • sim.model: The model object that defines the system to be simulated.

  • sim.algorithm: The algorithm object that defines the method of simulation.

  • sim.settings: An instance of the qclab.Constants class that defines the settings of the simulation.

  • sim.initial_state: A variable object that defines the initial state of the system.

A simulation object containing a default mean-field simulation of the spin-boson model can be created as:

from qclab import Simulation
from qclab.models import SpinBoson
from qclab.algorithms import MeanField

sim = Simulation()
sim.model = SpinBoson()
sim.algorithm = MeanField()
sim.initial_state = np.zeros((sim.model.constants.num_quantum_states,), dtype=complex)
sim.initial_state[0] = 1.0 + 0.0j

where input_settings is a dictionary of settings that overwrite the default settings of the simulation described below.

Simulation Settings#

A default simulation (i.e. one provided with no input dictionary of settings) has the following settings:

  • tmax: The total simulation time (default: 10.0).

  • dt_update: The update time step of the simulation (default: 0.001).

  • dt_collect: The collect time step of the simulation (default: 0.1).

  • num_trajs: The total number of trajectories to be simulated (default: 100).

  • batch_size: The number of trajectories to be simulated at a time (default: 25).

  • progress_bar: Whether to display a progress bar during the simulation (default: True).

  • debug: Whether to run the simulation in debug mode (default: False).

These settings can be changed by passing a dictionary of settings to the simulation constructor, as in:

input_settings = {
    "tmax": 5.0,
    "dt_update": 0.01,
    "num_trajs": 200
}
sim = Simulation(settings=input_settings)

This will create a simulation with a total time of 5.0, an update time step of 0.01, and 200 trajectories, while all other settings will take their default values.

Alternatively, a simulation’s settings can be changed after the simulation has been created by modifying the attributes of the sim.settings object directly, as in:

sim.settings.tmax = 5.0
sim.settings.dt_update = 0.01
sim.settings.num_trajs = 200

Running a Simulation#

Once a simulation object has been created and populated with a model, algorithm, and initial state, the simulation can be run by passing the simulation to a dynamics driver. See Dynamics Drivers for more information.

from qclab.dynamics import serial_driver

data = serial_driver(sim)

The resulting data object is a dictionary containing the outputs of the simulation, which are defined by the collect tasks of the algorithm (see Algorithms). For more information on the data objects see Data Objects.