Philosophy

Caterpillar is a library dedicated to the compilation of quantum circuits. In particular it translates a logic network into a quantum circuit.

Caterpillar interfaces with the logic networks defined in the library mockturtle and uses tweedledum to describe quantum circuits. Both libraries are, together with Caterpillar, part of the LSI Logic Synthesis Libraries.

The core algorithm of the library is a hierarchical method called logic network synthesis. It takes a logic network as input and returns a reversible network, saving all the intermediate results on helper qubits (ancillae). This synthesis task requires all intermediate results to be uncomputed.

Caterpillar supports several different uncomputing methods, called strategies. In some cases the problem of finding a good strategy is encoded as a SAT problem and solved with state-of-the-art SAT solvers.