How to use Boulder Opal documentation

Software products are only as good as their documentation.

Boulder Opal is incredibly flexible giving you the power to solve nearly any challenge that arises in your research. That flexibility also means it can occasionally be overwhelming to find the help you need. To make sure you succeed we’ve built a comprehensive set of documentation providing coverage of everything you need to go from concept to execution.

We follow the Diátaxis framework to help improve organization. Accordingly you’ll see tags on all of our documents indicating the kind of documentation you’ll see so you can match the docs to the tasks you want to undertake. You’ll see each kind scattered throughout our documentation site.

• Topics: Provide context, general guidance, and comparisons of different methods so you can understand how different capabilities fit together and can be deployed for your problems. Example: Compare control design (optimization) strategies in Boulder Opal

• Tutorials: Help you learn by doing, and include code-complete examples of simple workflows so you can see how key tasks are undertaken in practice. Example: Learn simulation basics through the dynamics of a single qubit

• User guides: Provide step-by-step instructions on specific tasks to help you rapidly achieve a goal. Example: How to create dephasing and amplitude robust single-qubit gates

• References: Contain all relevant information on coding, inputs, outputs, formats, etc of Boulder Opal as a product. Because Reference material is so important it stands alone in our documentation navigation. Example: Closed-loop optimization

• Application notes*: Demonstrate a complete solution to a complex task using one or more features of Boulder Opal, typically driven by a user’s problems. Example: Design error-detectable entangling gates for superconducting resonators in dual-rail encoding

In addition you’ll find a comprehensive search function on our Docs page as well as a set of FAQs for quick reference. But if you ever get lost, just look for the chat icon in the lower-right of your browser and we’ll be happy to help!

*Note: Application notes are formally equivalent to topics under Diátaxis, but we segregate them for convenience.