Programmable Pauli Virtual Machine

A fast quantum circuit simulator written in Rust, with Python bindings.

Install

Python (with uv):

uv add git+https://github.com/QuEraComputing/ppvm.git#subdirectory=ppvm-python

Rust:

[dependencies]
ppvm-pauli-sum = { git = "https://github.com/QuEraComputing/ppvm" }

Examples

Pauli propagation runs backwards (Heisenberg picture): write gates in reverse order.

from ppvm import PauliSum

state = PauliSum.new(n_qubits=2, terms=["ZZ"])
state.cnot(0, 1)   # GHZ preparation, written in reverse
state.h(0)

print(state)                    # 1.000 * IZ
print(state.overlap_with_zero())

The generalized stabilizer tableau is itself a form of Pauli propagation — it tracks stabilizer generators under Heisenberg evolution, extended to handle non-Clifford gates and measurements:

from ppvm import GeneralizedTableau

tab = GeneralizedTableau(n_qubits=2)
tab.h(0)
tab.cnot(0, 1)

r0, r1 = tab.measure(0), tab.measure(1)
print(f"Qubit 0: {r0}, Qubit 1: {r1}")  # always correlated

See the documentation for the Rust API, Stim integration, and symbolic propagation.

Citation

If you use PPVM in your research, please cite arXiv:2610.18225 (BibTeX also in CITATION.bib):

@misc{luo2026ppvmcircuitsimulationframework,
      title={PPVM: A Circuit Simulation Framework for Digital Twins of Quantum Processors},
      author={Xiu-Zhe Luo and David Plankensteiner and Kai-Hsin Wu and Rob Patterson and Alexander Schuckert and Oriol Rubies-Bigorda and Refaat Ismail and Jonhas Colina and Neelay Fruitwala and Danylo Lykov and Tyson Jones and Stefan Krastanov and Rafael Haenel and Stefan Ostermann and Sheng-Tao Wang},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2610.18225},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={quant-ph},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18225},
}

License & contributing

Licensed under Apache 2.0; see NOTICE for attribution. Contributions are welcome — read CONTRIBUTING.md and the CLA before opening a pull request.