Pennylane-qiskit

New features since last release

* Defined the `QiskitDevice.batch_execute` method, to allow
Qiskit backends to run multiple quantum circuits at the same time. This
addition allows submitting batches of circuits to IBMQ e.g., when computing
gradients internally.
[(156)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/156)
[(163)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/163)
[(167)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/167)

Improvements

* Added native support for the `qml.Identity` operation to the Qiskit devices and converters.
[(162)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/162)

* Added support for the `qml.SX` operation to the Qiskit devices.
[(158)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/158)

* Added support for returning job execution times.
[(160)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/160)

* Added support for Python 3.10.
[(170)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-forest/pull/170)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Guillermo Alonso-Linaje, David Ittah, Romain Moyard, Antal Száva

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Improvements

* Removed adding the `verbose` option to the arguments passed to the backend
such that no warnings are raised.
[(151)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/151)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Christina Lee, Jay Soni, Antal Száva

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Improvements

* Removed a validation check for `qml.QubitUnitary` that existed in the device and
adjusted a related test case.
[(144)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/144)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Christina Lee, Antal Száva

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New features since last release

* Added support for the new `qml.Projector` observable in
PennyLane v0.16 to the Qiskit devices.
[(137)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/137)

Breaking changes

* Deprecated Python 3.6.
[(140)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/140)

Improvements

* The plugin can now load Qiskit circuits with more complicated `ParameterExpression` variables.
[(139)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/139)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Christina Lee, Vincent Wong

Breaking changes

* For compatibility with PennyLane v0.15, the `analytic` keyword argument
has been removed from all devices. Statistics can still be computed analytically
by setting `shots=None`.
[(130)](https://github.com/XanaduAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/130)

Improvements

* PennyLane-Qiskit has been upgraded to work with Qiskit version 0.25.
[(132)](https://github.com/XanaduAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/132)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Christina Lee, Olivia Di Matteo, Josh Izaac, Antal Száva

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Bug fixes

* With the release of Qiskit 0.23.3 gate parameters cannot be arrays. The device now converts arrays to lists.
[(126)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/126)

* When parsing the IBMQ token and the IBMQ URL, the values passed as keywords take precedence over environment variables.
[(121)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/121)

* When loading Qiskit circuits to PennyLane templates using `load` in `converter.py`, parameters with `requires_grad=False` are bound to the circuit. The old version bound objects that were not PennyLane `Variable`'s, but that object class is now deprecated.
[(127)](https://github.com/PennyLaneAI/pennylane-qiskit/pull/127)

Contributors

This release contains contributions from (in alphabetical order):

Christina Lee, Antal Szava

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