This entry continues from installation of QuTiP.

1. Make sure you are in a Conda command prompt and the environment “cyber” is activated. As per official documentation, install qiskit and galois:

   pip install qiskit[visualization] qiskit-aer qiskit-ibm-runtime galois

   galois is not necessary for qiskit but necessary for our courses.

   In case Qiskit uses a lower version of NumPy than what QuTiP does, expect existing NumPy to be downgraded, but this might not happen.

   As of 22 Feb 2025, the latest version of Qiskit is 1.4.0.

2. Subsequently, as per official documentation, install the qiskit_textbook package:

   pip install git+https://github.com/qiskit-community/qiskit-textbook.git#subdirectory=qiskit-textbook-src

   Qiskit Textbook is a community project offering learning resources that will be useful to us.

3. Test Qiskit in a Python shell:

   The two commands in the screenshot above ☝ should not trigger any error.

4. Next, test Qiskit in JupyterLab or Visual Studio Code (preferred as of 2025 but discussed later). To launch JupyterLab, as per official documentation, open a Conda prompt (not Python shell) and type:

   jupyter lab

   Expect a web browser window to be launched, where you can create a new “Python 3 (ipykernel)” notebook:

   Note ipykernel is an interactive Python kernel for Jupyter.

   Copying the first piece of code from the “Introduction to Qiskit” tutorial and pasting it into the newly created “Python 3 (ipykernel)” notebook should produce the circuit diagram at the bottom of this screenshot:

Qiskit comes with a super-quick introduction to Python and Jupyter notebooks.

Visual Studio Code is a popular and free alternative to a web browser for hosting Jupyter notebooks, and as of 2025, I recommend it over JupyterLab, because of the former’s superior support for internal links and LaTeX for typesetting equations.

To open a Jupyter notebook in Visual Studio Code, 1️⃣ open the folder the Jupyter notebook resides in, and 2️⃣ select the correct Conda virtual environmment as per Fig. 4.