Qiskit Backend Specifications for OpenQASM and OpenPulse Experiments

Understand

As interest in quantum computing grows, there is a pressing need for standardized API's so that algorithm designers, circuit designers, and physicists can be provided a common reference frame for designing, executing, and optimizing experiments.

• There is also a need for a language specification that goes beyond gates and allows users to specify the time dynamics of a quantum experiment and recover the time dynamics of the output.
• In this document we provide a specification for a common interface to backends (simulators and experiments) and a standarized data structure (Qobj --- quantum object) for sending experiments to those backends via Qiskit.
• We also introduce OpenPulse, a language for specifying pulse level control (i.e.