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There has been a lot of interest in the construction of quantum simulators ranging from special purpose simulators to flexible programmable simulators [CIR2012], [QUA2019]. There are analogue quantum simulators which are specialised physical devices that can be used to simulate the laws of nature on particle behaviour (for example, using ultra-cold neutral atoms [LIN2010] or trapped ions [FRI2008]). There are also digital quantum simulators that use digital models where qubit encoding is applied to represent quantum states and quantum gates as a quantum algorithm for the physical model [MAG2020], [BUL2009]. The following list provides more information on some of the currently existing simulator tools and their areas of application with a special focus on QKD simulators. Further examples can be found online [QUA2020], [IETF2020] and in the QKD Whitepaper.

QKDNetSim (Quantum Key Distribution Network Simulation Module)

QKDNetSim is a simulator intended to provide additional understanding of QKD technology with respect to existing network solutions [MEH2017], [QKD2020].

Qkdsimulator

A QKD-simulator web application based on a simulation engine that includes a complete Quantum Key Distribution Python-based toolkit. It offers an implementation of the entire QKD stack (quantum channel, sifting, authentication using universal hashing, error estimation, reconciliation/error correction and privacy amplification) [ATA2020].

Qiskit

Qiskit (https://qiskit.org/) is an open-source toolkit that helps users schedule and run quantum programs either in the cloud on a variety of simulators and quantum processors or in their local Python environment. Users have the option to build their own circuits or select some pre-built circuits from an extensive circuit library. More information...