procedural: the construction inside is hidden
architectural: same five places, expressivity in place of error; the structure is part of its identity
composite template: a recurring composition with a guarantee of its own
Quantum Software Lab · an open resource
Quantum Algorithmic Primitives Atlas
A card catalogue of the quantum algorithmic toolkit. Each card is one primitive, an abstract object with a contract in five places, the same for every kind: what it needs (access, promise) and what it guarantees (output, error or, for an architecture, expressivity, and cost). The card records its defining papers, variants, current status and limits, and the hooks that connect it to hardware, to other primitives, to error correction and to verification. Named algorithms and problems are not cards; they are compositions of cards. Edited by Elham Kashefi (Quantum Software Lab, University of Edinburgh; LIP6, Sorbonne Université and CNRS). Compiled with AI agents from the sources listed under About, tested against 2,439 items from eight corpora (seven of them not used to build it), and reviewed by a separate AI model under the editor's rules. Unknowns are marked "?".
Select a card to open its contract, its variants, the papers it rests on and its partners on the composition map. Every arXiv number and DOI opens the paper. Each card has its own link, shown at the top of the card, so it can be sent on its own.
The Atlas was first presented at Nobel Symposium 210 (Stellenbosch, October 2026), in the talk "Algorithms as collisions", and is the reference for the Primitive–Platform Matchmaking pilot born there. It is an independent academic resource of the Quantum Software Lab, open to all, not an activity of the Nobel Foundation or of the symposium organisers. Version 0.4, 27 October 2026.