Pennylane-qiskit

New features since last release

Improvements 🛠

Breaking changes 💔

Deprecations 👋

Documentation 📝

Internal changes

* Pinning `setuptools` in the CI to update how the plugin is installed.
[(620)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-cirq/pull/620)

* Pinning `qiskit.aer` in the `setup.py` file to maintain compatibility with the plugin.
[(620)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-cirq/pull/620)

Bug fixes 🐛

* The layout of the circuit is now applied to the observables when it is changed on transpilation.
[(613)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/613)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Pietropaolo Frisoni
Juan Felipe Huan Lew Yee

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Breaking changes 💔

* The ``qml.QubitStateVector`` template has been removed. Instead, use :class:`~pennylane.StatePrep`.
[(601)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/601)

Bug fixes 🐛

* Fixed premature session closure when using `qiskit_session`.
[(608)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/608)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Andrija Paurevic
Tak Hur

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Other changes

* The `qiskit` dependency has been temporarily pinned to version `<1.3` to prevent wrong results.
At present, `pennylane-qiskit` is incompatible with `qiskit 1.3`.
[(603)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/603)
[(604)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/604)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Pietropaolo Frisoni

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Improvements 🛠

* Make `qiskit_session` available top-level. Users can now import it as `pennylane_qiskit.qiskit_session`.
[(593)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/593)

Breaking changes 💔

* Remove support for Python 3.9.
[(597)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/597)

* Upgrade minimum supported version of PennyLane to 0.38.0.
[(599)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/599)

Documentation 📝

* Added warning in the documentation of `qiskit_session` due to recent reports of unexpected behavior.
[(594)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/594)

Bug fixes 🐛

* Fix deprecated import path for `QubitDevice`.
[(584)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/584)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Astral Cai
Lillian M. A. Frederiksen
Austin Huang
Mudit Pandey


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Bug fixes 🐛

* Due to the removal of the `Session` and `Backend` keywords in the 0.30 release of `qiskit-ibm-runtime`, the PennyLane-Qiskit
plugin now pins to `qiskit-ibm-runtime<=0.29`.
[(587)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/587)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Austin Huang
Mudit Pandey

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New features since last release

* Added support for converting Qiskit noise models to
PennyLane ``NoiseModels`` using ``load_noise_model``.
[(577)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/577)
[(578)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/578)

* Qiskit Sessions can now be used for the ``qiskit.remote`` device with the ``qiskit_session`` context
manager.
[(551)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/551)

Improvements 🛠

* Qiskit Runtime Primitives are supported by the ``qiskit.remote`` device. Circuits ran using the ``qiskit.remote``
device will automatically call the SamplerV2 and EstimatorV2 primitives appropriately. Additionally, runtime options can be passed as keyword arguments directly to the ``qiskit.remote`` device.
[(513)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/513)

Breaking changes 💔

* Support has been removed for Qiskit versions below 0.46. The minimum required version for Qiskit is now 1.0.
If you want to continue to use older versions of Qiskit with the plugin, please use version 0.36 of
the Pennylane-Qiskit plugin.
[(536)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/536)

* The test suite no longer runs for Qiskit versions below 0.46.
[(536)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/536)

* The ``qiskit.basicaer`` device has been removed because it is not supported for versions of Qiskit above 0.46.
[(546)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/546)

* The IBM quantum devices, ``qiskit.ibmq``, ``qiskit.ibmq.circuit_runner`` and ``qiskit.ibmq.sampler``, have been removed due to deprecations of the IBMProvider and the cloud simulator "ibmq_qasm_simulator".
[(550)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/550)

Documentation 📝

* The Pennylane-Qiskit plugin page has been updated to reflect the changes in both the plugin's
capabilities and Qiskit.
[563](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/563)

Contributors ✍️

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Utkarsh Azad
Lillian M. A. Frederiksen
Austin Huang

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