Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG)

A personal quantum computing project built with Qiskit. This is the starting point of a codebase I intend to keep building on over time, exploring quantum circuits and algorithms.

The first piece of functionality is a quantum random number generator: a single qubit is put into superposition with a Hadamard gate and then measured, producing an outcome that is genuinely random rather than pseudo-random like random.random().

Every run is effectively a "quantum coin flip": measuring the qubit in superposition collapses it to 0 or 1 with an exact 50/50 probability.

Status

Early stage — currently contains a single working example. Expect the structure and scope to evolve as I add more quantum experiments, abstractions, and tooling.

How it works

The circuit in qrng.py consists of three steps:

1. Initialize — a 1-qubit / 1-classical-bit circuit is created.
2. Superposition — a Hadamard (H) gate is applied to the qubit, putting it into an equal 50/50 superposition of |0⟩ and |1⟩.
3. Measure — the qubit is measured, collapsing the superposition and storing the result (0 or 1) in the classical bit.

The circuit is then run 100 times ("shots") on Qiskit's local AerSimulator to show the statistical breakdown, and an optional histogram of the results is plotted with Matplotlib.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Dependencies listed in requirements.txt:
  • Qiskit (qiskit)
  • Qiskit Aer (qiskit-aer)
  • Matplotlib (matplotlib)

Installation

Create and activate a virtual environment, then install the dependencies:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate      # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Note: .venv/, venv/, and env/ are already ignored via .gitignore.

Usage

Run the script:

python qrng.py

You'll see the circuit diagram, followed by the results of 100 quantum coin flips, for example:

Our Quantum Circuit:
     ┌───┐┌─┐
  q: ┤ H ├┤M├
     └───┘└╥┘
 c: 1/═════╩═
           0

Results of 100 quantum coin flips: {'0': 51, '1': 49}

Because the outcomes are genuinely random, the exact counts will differ on every run — though with enough shots they will always hover close to a 50/50 split.

If a window doesn't appear when the histogram code runs, your backend may not support interactive plots. You can instead save the figure by replacing plt.show() with:

plt.savefig("histogram.png")

Project structure

quantum-project/
├── .gitignore        # Python virtual environment ignores
├── qrng.py           # The quantum random number generator
├── README.md         # This file
└── requirements.txt  # Python dependencies

License

Apache License 2.0