cirq.act_on

Applies an action to a state argument.

cirq.act_on(
    action: Any,
    sim_state: 'cirq.SimulationStateBase',
    qubits: Optional[Sequence['cirq.Qid']] = None,
    *,
    allow_decompose: bool = True
)

For example, the action may be a cirq.Operation and the state argument may represent the internal state of a state vector simulator (a cirq.StateVectorSimulationState).

For non-operations, the qubits argument must be explicitly supplied.

The action is applied by first checking if action._act_on_ exists and returns True (instead of NotImplemented) for the given object. Then fallback strategies specified by the state argument via _act_on_fallback_ are attempted. If those also fail, the method fails with a TypeError.

action The operation, gate, or other to apply to the state tensor.
sim_state A mutable state object that should be modified by the action. May specify an _act_on_fallback_ method to use in case the action doesn't recognize it.
qubits The sequence of qubits to use when applying the action.
allow_decompose Defaults to True. Forwarded into the _act_on_fallback_ method of sim_state. Determines if decomposition should be used or avoided when attempting to act action on sim_state. Used by internal methods to avoid redundant decompositions.

Nothing. Results are communicated by editing sim_state.

ValueError If called on an operation and supplied qubits, if not called on an operation and no qubits are supplied, or if _act_on_ or _act_on_fallback_ returned something other than True or NotImplemented.
TypeError Failed to act action on sim_state.