Quantum circuit

Circuit that performs teleportation of a qubit. This circuit consists of both quantum gates and measurements. Measurement is a quantum phenomenon that does not occur in classical circuits.

In quantum information theory, a quantum circuit is a model for quantum computation, similar to classical circuits, in which a computation is a sequence of quantum gates, measurements, initializations of qubits to known values, and possibly other actions. The minimum set of actions that a circuit needs to be able to perform on the qubits to enable quantum computation is known as DiVincenzo's criteria.

Circuits are written such that the horizontal axis is time, starting at the left hand side and ending at the right. Horizontal lines are qubits, doubled lines represent classical bits. The items that are connected by these lines are operations performed on the qubits, such as measurements or gates. These lines define the sequence of events, and are usually not physical cables.

The graphical depiction of quantum circuit elements is described using a variant of the Penrose graphical notation. Richard Feynman used an early version of the quantum circuit notation in 1986.