Interested in working on SymPy's quantum physics module

[Tilman Roeder]

Hello,

My name is Tilman. Me (and a friend of mine) are interested in working on extending and polishing the quantum physics module in SymPy as part of a university project. We both study Physics (currently in our 2nd year) at Imperial College London. The project work would be during the next academic year (so from September). However, I think it would be valuable to get started with some simple things to get aquatinted with the code base and process (as well as allowing plenty time to read up on the relevant subjects).

From looking through the documentation etc. I get the impression that the QM module is currently very much a work in progress (especially the quantum information/ computation bits). From what I can tell, a good thing to get started on might be adding a few analytic solutions. There is one for the infinite square well, but none e.g. the harmonic oscillator. Starting with something very simple like this could be a really good way of getting to know the process, while focussing on the code etc., before tackling something more challenging.

My friend and I are meeting someone in the physics department next week to discuss if this kind of work would be suitable for our project, and it would be really helpful to get the opinion of someone more closely involved with SymPy on this matter. (Note that I am also interested in contributing, should this turn out to not be suitable as part of my university work.)

We are currently writing exams, but in about a month I would love to get started on some simple things to get a head start on the main project work.

TL;DR (useful pieces of information):

- Interested to work on QM module

- Good experience with Python, especially for scientific computing, as well as some experience using SymPy to do hard integrals. See specifically these two repos on my GitHub: https://github.com/dyedgreen/schroedinger, https://github.com/dyedgreen/labs-ray-tracing

- Experience with other languages like C, Golang, Ruby, JavaScript

- Mathematics education level: 2nd year Theoretical Physics Undergraduate

- I speak English and German

Thanks for taking the time to read this :)

Tilman

[Oscar Benjamin]

Hi Tilman,

It's great that you're interested in doing this!

I don't know the quantum module very well myself but it probably does
need work. As far as I know no one is really working on it right now.
A good place to start thinking about improving it would probably be
looking over the open issues:
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aphysics.quantum
Some of those might be easy to fix and that's a good way to get
experience contributing. In any case the issues show the problems
people have had using the module in the past which helps to think
about what is a useful improvement.

As for whether this makes a good University project that's a hard
question to answer. I'm sure it's possible to make a good project out
of this but I have no idea whether it would meet the expectations of
your University (you have to talk to them about that).

One difficulty in particular with the quantum module is that I'm not
sure if there are any active contributors who know it well. That means
that it might be difficult to get guidance with it and it might also
be hard to get your patches reviewed. On the flip side it means that
an active contributor is definitely wanted and there is the
opportunity to really take ownership of it.

Please let us know what happens after you talk to your University
about this. In any case finding a simple bug to fix is probably a good
start.

--
Oscar

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[Aaron Meurer]

Hi Tilman.

You're definitely welcome to contribute. As Oscar noted, one of the
biggest challenges for the quantum module right now is that there are
no active maintainers of it. As such, your pull requests may take a
while to review. I don't want to discourage you, but do be aware of
this. If your university project requires the code to be merged into
the repo, that may be a challenge. There has been some uncertainty in
the past about what to do about the quantum module, since there are so
few SymPy developers who can maintain it, There have been some
proposals to move it out into a separate library, but that hasn't
happened. That's not relevant for your contributions. It is for the
time being still a part of SymPy, but it's something to be aware of.
The central issue is the lack of understanding of the underlying
physics by most SymPy contributors. Unfortunately, I also fall into
this camp, so I can't comment on your proposed improvement.

I would also suggest looking at external libraries, such as QNET
(https://github.com/mabuchilab/QNET), which uses SymPy. They may be
more developed than SymPy's quantum module.

Another suggestion would be to use the blame functionality of
git/GitHub to find people who have contributed to the module in the
past, and ask them if they would be willing to help review your work.
I know Ondrej Certik has said that he could help review quantum work.
There may be others who are able to as well.

Aaron Meurer

[Ondřej Čertík]

Hi Tilman,

Yes, I am available to help. You should think if you'd be interested in becoming the maintainer of the module down the road.

Ondrej

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[Tilman Roeder]

Hi Oscar,

Thank you for your quick reply.

On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 1:38:14 AM UTC+1, Oscar wrote:

Hi Tilman,

It's great that you're interested in doing this!

I don't know the quantum module very well myself but it probably does
need work. As far as I know no one is really working on it right now.
A good place to start thinking about improving it would probably be
looking over the open issues:
https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aphysics.quantum
Some of those might be easy to fix and that's a good way to get
experience contributing. In any case the issues show the problems
people have had using the module in the past which helps to think
about what is a useful improvement.

Thanks for pointing out the specific issues, I will have a more thorough look at them after exams.

 

As for whether this makes a good University project that's a hard
question to answer. I'm sure it's possible to make a good project out
of this but I have no idea whether it would meet the expectations of
your University (you have to talk to them about that).

One difficulty in particular with the quantum module is that I'm not
sure if there are any active contributors who know it well. That means
that it might be difficult to get guidance with it and it might also
be hard to get your patches reviewed. On the flip side it means that
an active contributor is definitely wanted and there is the
opportunity to really take ownership of it.

Please let us know what happens after you talk to your University
about this. In any case finding a simple bug to fix is probably a good
start.

Will do!

 

--
Oscar

On Sun, 19 May 2019 at 02:29, Tilman Roeder <dyed.g...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> My name is Tilman. Me (and a friend of mine) are interested in working on extending and polishing the quantum physics module in SymPy as part of a university project. We both study Physics (currently in our 2nd year) at Imperial College London. The project work would be during the next academic year (so from September). However, I think it would be valuable to get started with some simple things to get aquatinted with the code base and process (as well as allowing plenty time to read up on the relevant subjects).
>
> From looking through the documentation etc. I get the impression that the QM module is currently very much a work in progress (especially the quantum information/ computation bits). From what I can tell, a good thing to get started on might be adding a few analytic solutions. There is one for the infinite square well, but none e.g. the harmonic oscillator. Starting with something very simple like this could be a really good way of getting to know the process, while focussing on the code etc., before tackling something more challenging.
>
> My friend and I are meeting someone in the physics department next week to discuss if this kind of work would be suitable for our project, and it would be really helpful to get the opinion of someone more closely involved with SymPy on this matter. (Note that I am also interested in contributing, should this turn out to not be suitable as part of my university work.)
>
> We are currently writing exams, but in about a month I would love to get started on some simple things to get a head start on the main project work.
>
>
> TL;DR (useful pieces of information):
>
> - Interested to work on QM module
> - Good experience with Python, especially for scientific computing, as well as some experience using SymPy to do hard integrals. See specifically these two repos on my GitHub: https://github.com/dyedgreen/schroedinger, https://github.com/dyedgreen/labs-ray-tracing
> - Experience with other languages like C, Golang, Ruby, JavaScript
> - Mathematics education level: 2nd year Theoretical Physics Undergraduate
> - I speak English and German
>
> Thanks for taking the time to read this :)
>
>
> Tilman
>
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group.

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sy...@googlegroups.com.

[Tilman Roeder]

Hi Aaron and Ondrej,

Many thanks for replying so quickly!

On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 8:19:04 PM UTC+1, ondrej wrote:

Hi Tilman,

Yes, I am available to help. You should think if you'd be interested in becoming the maintainer of the module down the road.

Thank you! I will definitely think about this, depending on how things develop :)

 

Ondrej

On Mon, May 20, 2019, at 12:35 PM, Aaron Meurer wrote:
> Hi Tilman.
>
> You're definitely welcome to contribute. As Oscar noted, one of the
> biggest challenges for the quantum module right now is that there are
> no active maintainers of it. As such, your pull requests may take a
> while to review. I don't want to discourage you, but do be aware of
> this. If your university project requires the code to be merged into
> the repo, that may be a challenge. There has been some uncertainty in
> the past about what to do about the quantum module, since there are so
> few SymPy developers who can maintain it, There have been some
> proposals to move it out into a separate library, but that hasn't
> happened. That's not relevant for your contributions. It is for the
> time being still a part of SymPy, but it's something to be aware of.
> The central issue is the lack of understanding of the underlying
> physics by most SymPy contributors. Unfortunately, I also fall into
> this camp, so I can't comment on your proposed improvement.
>
> I would also suggest looking at external libraries, such as QNET
> (https://github.com/mabuchilab/QNET), which uses SymPy. They may be
> more developed than SymPy's quantum module.

 Thanks for pointing this out, I will also have a more thorough look there once my exams finish :)

> Another suggestion would be to use the blame functionality of
> git/GitHub to find people who have contributed to the module in the
> past, and ask them if they would be willing to help review your work.
> I know Ondrej Certik has said that he could help review quantum work.
> There may be others who are able to as well.
>
> Aaron Meurer
>
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> Groups "sympy" group.
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[Vishesh Mangla]

I 'm studying chemistry at Bits Pilani and I have studied Quantum Chemistry previous year.I know about inf,finite,triangular potential Wells and associated methods of solving differential equations.I have also studied Hartree Fock analysis and related stuff I would also like to get included if possible.

Thanks,

Vishesh

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[Tilman Roeder]

Hey everyone,

After talking to the people at my university, it seems like it is unlikely that I will be able to get involved as part of the university project. But once I have some time, I will look through the open issues and see if there is anything I can do :)

Apologies for making you guys wait around so long, the process of talking to people has been much more long-winded than I anticipated.

Tilman

[Oscar Benjamin]

Hi Tilman,

It's a shame the project didn't work out but I'm glad to hear you're
still interested in contributing. Let us know if you start working on
this and want any guidance/help.

--
Oscar

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